Explore the Solar System

NASA/JPL-based object facts and orbital data. The orbital scene is educational, not spacecraft navigation.

3D · Educational scale · Orbits compressed

Distances and sizes are compressed. Select objects to explore official NASA facts.

Click the scene, then hold W/S to move forward/back and A/D to strafe. Free flight also uses arrow keys; drag to look around, Q/E to move down/up, Shift to move faster. Choose an object or Reset to return to orbit controls. Camera travel uses illustrative scene units, not real distances.

The interactive scene is omitted from print. Read the model limits and references below.

Explore the Solar System: Planets, Orbits and Rotation

Meet our planetary neighborhood

The Sun is a star. The eight planets, in order outward from it, are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Pluto belongs to the dwarf-planet category. The explorer above shows a selected set of natural moons, not every object in the Solar System. NASA: Solar System facts.

Try the explorer

Start in General mode. Choose an object to read its facts and focus the view.
Drag the scene to turn the camera; use the mouse wheel to zoom. Keyboard users can focus the canvas, press arrow keys to rotate, and use plus or minus to zoom. The object chooser is an alternative to selecting a sphere.
Select 0.01 days per second to slow the simulation. Pause to compare objects. Reset view / Today restores the overview and today's simulation date, then resumes time unless reduced motion is enabled.
Switch to Kids mode for an ordered planet lineup. Swipe sideways on a narrow screen. Pause floating stops the decorative movement. The eyes and gentle floating are illustrations, not physical properties of planets.

A spin and a journey are different

Rotation means turning about an axis; revolution means traveling around another body. The facts panel reports sidereal rotation, which is measured relative to distant stars, rather than the interval between successive sunrises. Venus has retrograde rotation. The negative rotation period in the source table indicates direction, not a negative duration. NASA: metric fact sheet and definitions.

For example, the rounded orbital periods are 88.0 Earth days for Mercury and 365.2 for Earth. Dividing 365.2 by 88.0 gives about 4.15: Mercury completes roughly four orbits in one Earth orbital period. This compares periods; it does not mean four equal-length paths.

Read the picture carefully

The General-mode planetary calculation uses JPL's fitted orbital elements for 1800–2050. It is an approximation, not a high-precision ephemeris. Earth uses the Earth–Moon barycenter approximation; UTC is used in place of the model's dynamical time. Moon orbital phases and orbital planes in this explorer are schematic; this is not a lesson about the Moon's changing illuminated phases. JPL: approximate positions.

The drawing enlarges bodies and compresses distances. Do not measure the screen to infer actual sizes or spacing. Kids mode is a fixed teaching arrangement: it does not demonstrate orbital motion or relative planet sizes. Planet temperatures are reference values; for the giant planets they describe an atmospheric level, not a solid surface. NASA: fact-sheet notes.

Our comparisons with JPL Horizons at three dates differed by up to about 3.85 million km in planetary position. This is a sample result, not an error guarantee for other dates. Axial directions and rotational phases in the drawing are also schematic; do not use the picture to identify the current face of a planet. Colors and surface patterns are stylized, not geographic maps.

Questions to explore

Can you explain the difference between spinning and orbiting? Why can a readable picture of all eight planets require a distorted scale? Which statements come from a calculation, and which features are drawn only to make the lesson clearer?

If the scene does not work

You can still read this article and use the object chooser for text facts when WebGL is unavailable. Reduced-motion settings stop automatic time progression and decorative bobbing. You can also pause motion with the on-screen controls.