Planets & the Solar System
One ordinary star, eight planets, hundreds of moons and billions of smaller bodies, all born from the same spinning cloud 4.6 billion years ago. These readings tour the neighbourhood from the Sun's core to the frozen edge.
8 articles · about 30 minutes of reading
Planets & the Solar System
Comets, Asteroids and Pluto
Between and beyond the planets drift millions of leftover worlds: rocky asteroids, icy comets and dwarf planets like Pluto. They are the solar system's original building material.
Article · 4 min read
Planets & the Solar System
Jupiter
The largest planet is a world of storms bigger than Earth, a magnetic field that could swallow the Sun, and moons that may hide oceans of liquid water.
Article · 3 min read
Planets & the Solar System
Mars
The red planet is cold, dry and nearly airless today, but rivers once ran across it. Here is what the rovers have found, and why we keep going back.
Article · 4 min read
Planets & the Solar System
Mercury and Venus
The two planets closer to the Sun than Earth could hardly be more different: one a scorched, airless rock, the other a world drowned in acid clouds and crushing heat.
Article · 3 min read
Planets & the Solar System
Saturn
The ringed planet is the jewel of the solar system, and its moons include a world with methane lakes and another that sprays its ocean into space.
Article · 4 min read
Planets & the Solar System
The Moon
Earth's only natural satellite was born in a cataclysm, steadies our seasons, drives the tides and remains the only other world humans have walked on.
Article · 4 min read
Planets & the Solar System
The Sun
A ball of hydrogen a million times the volume of Earth, fusing 600 million tonnes of fuel a second. Everything alive on Earth runs on its light.
Article · 4 min read
Planets & the Solar System
Uranus and Neptune
The two ice giants at the edge of the planetary system are cold, blue, strange and barely explored. Only one spacecraft has ever visited each, for a few hours.
Article · 4 min read