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.
Constellation Pictures
How to Find Orion's Belt in the Night Sky
Radio Telescope Image Gallery
How do I build a telescope at home?
Shooting the Stars as an Astrophotographer
The Largest Star in the Universe Is 1,700x Bigger Than Our Sun
Twinkle, Twinkle: The Ultimate Stars Quiz
White Dwarfs Can Shred Planets to Pieces
Learn More / Page 6
Saturn's largest moon Titan is the only other celestial body we know of that has liquid lakes on its surface. NASA has just captured some amazing footage of clouds.
The space telescope's ultraviolet observations come days before the Juno space probe will arrive to orbit the gas giant's polar regions.
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?
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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.
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.
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.
And this month's buck moon is extra-special because it is a supermoon!
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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!
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.
The Quadrantids are a short but powerful meteor shower that shows up in early January. How can you glimpse it?
A magnetar is a neutron star with a super-strong magnetic field. Astronomers consider them among the scariest objects in the universe, but why?
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Surely you've watched tons of sunsets in your lifetime. But have you ever seen the sunset and the moonrise simultaneously? Is that even possible?