# Solar System

> An interactive, heliocentric model of the Solar System with the real positions of the Sun and the eight planets, computed live in your browser.

Canonical: https://spacesphere.sygnito.com/en/solar

A live, heliocentric map of the Sun, planets, and Pluto

Scale: Distances compressed, positions real. Trajectory shape is affected by the compressed distance scale; the direction changes at flybys are real.

## Bodies

- **Sun**: A G-type star; its surface glows near 5,500 degrees C.
- **Mercury**: The closest planet to the Sun, circling it every 88 days.
- **Venus**: Wrapped in thick cloud; its surface runs near 460 degrees C.
- **Earth**: Our home world, the only one we know to host life.
- **Mars**: A cold desert world averaging about minus 65 degrees C.
- **Jupiter**: The largest planet; its four Galilean moons circle it here.
- **Saturn**: The ringed giant, wrapped in rings of ice and rock.
- **Uranus**: An ice giant that rolls on its side, tilted about 98 degrees.
- **Neptune**: The most distant planet, a deep blue ice giant.
- **Pluto**: A dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, near minus 229 degrees C.

## Spacecraft

- **Voyager 1**: Voyager 1 carries the Golden Record: sounds and images of Earth, greetings in 55 languages, and music, a message to anyone who may ever find it. After its 1980 Titan flyby bent its path about 35 degrees north of the planets' plane, it left them behind for good and is now in interstellar space.
- **Voyager 2**: Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune. At Neptune in August 1989 it flew about 4950 km above the cloud tops, aimed to meet the moon Triton, which orbits backward. The price was known in advance: Neptune's gravity bent the trajectory about 48 degrees south of the planets' plane, and it has been diving away from it ever since.
- **New Horizons**: New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, returning the first close images of its surface, including the vast heart-shaped ice plain Sputnik Planitia. It then continued into the Kuiper Belt, passing the small body Arrokoth in 2019, and remains outbound today.

## Data and updates

Positions are computed in the browser for the current moment, or for a simulated time you choose, so this markdown version lists none of them.

## Sources

- Textures: [Solar System Scope (solarsystemscope.com)](https://www.solarsystemscope.com/textures/), [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
- Pluto map: [NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI (New Horizons)](https://science.nasa.gov/resource/pluto-global-color-map/).
- Spacecraft positions: [NASA/JPL Horizons On-Line Ephemeris System](https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/) (Giorgini, JD and JPL Solar System Dynamics Group).

## Related

- [Travel times](https://spacesphere.sygnito.com/en/solar/travel)
- [Galaxy Atlas](https://spacesphere.sygnito.com/en/galaxy)