The Solar System

In the Solar System Channel, you can explore the planets and celestial objects around our own sun. Learn about topics such as Mars, Jupiter and the Moon.

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The changing phases of the moon have given us an enduring curiosity about the dark side of the moon. But is there really a dark side of the moon? What would we see there?

By Jonathan Strickland

The moon is often the largest object in the sky outside of the sun. What is the moon made of, how did it form -- and why do people blame it for their strange behavior?

By Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D.

Asteroid belts aren't quite the dense fields of gigantic spinning rocks that you may have seen in a "Star Wars" film, but they're still fascinating. In fact, the main asteroid belt may tell us how our entire solar system came into existence.

By John Fuller

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You've probably heard that staring at the sun is bad - even a few seconds can damage your eyes. But what if you looked at a solar eclipse?

By Katherine Neer & Yves Jeffcoat

A ball of fire blazed through southern Peru and left a huge crater -- and then villagers started getting sick. Early reports said the groundwater boiled and the air filled with sulfur. What happened?

By Jacob Silverman

Until recently, most people assumed that if Mars had liquid water, it no longer did and hadn't for quite some time. But scientists have recently noticed some anomalies in photos of Mars that may suggest there is water. Could there be life, too?

By Sarah Dowdey & Robert Lamb

It's tough to wrap your mind around a time when the Earth wasn't here. So how do Earth and the rest of the planets out there get their start in the universe?

By Robert Lamb

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We can't defy the odds of an asteroid taking a turn for Earth forever, so the world's astronomers watch the sky. What happens once they spot something?

By Robert Lamb

A billion years ago, the moon stopped being geologically active. But that's not to say that the moon is doing nothing for Earth. Let's find out why we owe our moon some thank yous.

By Kate Kershner

Precipitation does fall from the clouds of other planets, but it's a little more exotic than the rainwater we get here on Earth. Imagine sheets of methane, sulfuric acid and, yes, diamonds falling from the sky.

By Alison Cooper

The August 2023 full moon is known as the sturgeon moon. This year, it's also a supermoon and will be followed by a blue moon at the end of the month!

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

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You know Saturn and Venus and Mars. Can you put the eight planets of the solar system in the correct order? There are several ways to do this.

By Valerie Stimac

In recent years, Saturn has overtaken Jupiter as the planet with the most moons in our solar system. How many does it have and could it have even more?

By Valerie Stimac & Desiree Bowie

Scientists have observed flashes of X-rays coming from behind a supermassive black hole, consistent with Albert Einstein's prediction that extremely large objects can bend light.

By Patrick J. Kiger

The gegenschein, "faint light" in German, occurs under very specific astronomical conditions when the sun reaches the exact opposite of Earth from wherever you're stargazing.

By Valerie Stimac

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Astronomers at Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii noted a bright X-ray emission in 2018, which persisted for three weeks and glowed ten times more brightly than previously studied supernovas, but are just now beginning to understand it.

By Valerie Stimac

Many people dream of climbing Mount Everest, but what if you could scale the highest mountain in the solar system? That one is more than twice as tall as Everest! So, where is it?

By Valerie Stimac

If you imagine the eight major planets in a single line stretching out from the sun, this alignment occurs roughly every 13.4 trillion years. And our solar system is 4.5 billion years old.

By Valerie Stimac

The Tau Herculids meteor shower was made of debris from the broken comet SW3 and produced a lot of shooting stars, but not quite the meteor shower that was hoped for.

By Valerie Stimac

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As the search for Planet Nine wears on, and astronomers have yet to get so much as a glimpse of it, researchers are pondering what else the object might be.

By Ian O'Neill, Ph.D.

The Geminid meteor shower is one of the year's stronger displays in terms of number and size of meteors. When's the best time to see it?

By Christopher Hassiotis

In 1953, CalTech geochemist Clair Patterson came up with an estimate for Earth's age that still holds today.

By Patrick J. Kiger

The moon has seen a lot in its 4.5 million years of life, and this detailed geologic map serves as testament.

By Jesslyn Shields & Yara Simón

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You might call it a Christmas miracle. Jupiter and Saturn will align so closely they may look like a double planet. The last time we saw this was in 1226.

By Valerie Stimac & Desiree Bowie

The Quadrantids are a short but powerful meteor shower that shows up in early January. How can you glimpse it?

By Valerie Stimac