An illustration of the Sun and planets

Solar System Exploration

Join us as we explore our solar system.

10 THINGS about our solar system

This is an updated montage of planetary images taken by spacecraft managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. Included are from top to bottom images of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

1. Many Worlds

Our solar system has eight planets, and five dwarf planets.

Gray-colored asteroid Bennu is shaped like a spinning top.

2. Small Worlds, Too

About 1.4 million asteroids, and about 4,000 comets are in our solar system.

3. Lots of Moons

Our solar system has more than 200 planetary moons.

A swirling Milky Way Galaxy, with our Sun seen on the outskirts.

4. Meet Me in the Milky Way

Our solar system is in one of the Milky Way galaxy’s spiral arms called the Orion Spur.

Sun and planets in solar system

5. A Long Way Around

Our solar system takes about 230 million years to orbit the galactic center.

Spitzer Milky Way 1600px

6. Spiraling Through Space

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy.

The blue limb of Earth as viewed from the space station.

7. Diverse Atmospheres

Our solar system has many worlds with many types of atmospheres.

8. Ring Worlds

The four giant planets – and at least one asteroid – have rings.

Man in the moon with American flag

9. Getting Out There

More than 300 robotic spacecraft have left Earth's orbit, and 24 U.S. astronauts have traveled to the Moon.

Earth blue marble photo

10. Life as We Know It

So far, Earth is the only place we've found life in our solar system.

Solar System Overview

Our solar system has one star, eight planets, five officially named dwarf planets, hundreds of moons, thousands of comets, and more than a million asteroids.

Get Solar System Facts

About the Planets

Learn about the planets in our solar system.

The solar system has eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. There are five officially recognized dwarf planets in our solar system: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.

Get the Facts
An illustration of orange and blue planets and other objects in our solar system shown not to scale, but to illustrate some of the details of each world.
An artist's concept of our solar system showing the planets far closer together than they are in reality in order to represent the all of the bodies with some detail.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Which Planet is Biggest

Which planet is smallest? What is the order of the planets as we move out from the Sun?

This is a simple guide to the sizes of planets based on the equatorial diameter – or width – at the equator of each planet. There's also a handy list of the order of the planets moving away from our Sun.

Size Up the Planets
Illustration showing the planets stacked in rows.
The eight planets and dwarf planet Pluto.
NASA

What’s the Weather Like Out There?

We mean waaaay out there in our solar system – where the forecast might not be quite what you think. 

Let’s check the temperature of the Sun, and the planets in our solar system.

Get the Forecast for the Planets
A colorful. symbolic thermometer showing planets in our solar system ordered from hottest a the top to coldest at the bottom. The top of the graphic is red, then it fades to orange, yellow, green, then blue. It has illustrations of the planets.
An illustration of temperatures on planets in our solar system.
NASA

We're on a Mission to Touch the Sun

All Crewed Missions
Parker Solar Probe mission badge

Parker Solar Probe

active Mission

On a mission to “touch the Sun,” NASA's Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to fly through the corona – the Sun’s upper atmosphere – in 2021. With every…

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Parker solar probe
An illustration of the Parker Solar Probe flying by the Sun.
NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

Skywatching Resources

  • Daily Skywatching Guide

    NASA's detailed guide to watching the sky.

    Explore

  • What's Up

    NASA's monthly skywatching tips.

    Watch

  • Hubble's Night Sky Challenge

    Do you have a telescope? Each month in 2025, the Hubble team will release a new set of objects for you to explore. Compare your view to Hubble’s, then submit your observations to the Astronomical League to earn recognition for your achievement.

    Explore

  • Night Sky Planner

    Visible planets and night sky guide.

    Learn More

  • NASA's Skywatching Hub

    Tips and guides for skywatching.

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Featured Story

Avalanches, Icy Explosions, and Dunes: NASA Is Tracking New Year on Mars

Instead of a winter wonderland, the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere goes through an active — even explosive — spring thaw.…

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Featured Missions

All NASA Science Missions
A spacecraft hovers over a reddish striped moon with planet Jupiter in the background.

Europa Clipper

Europa Clipper launched Oct. 14, 2024, to conduct a detailed investigation of Jupiter's moon Europa.

Read More
This artist's-concept illustration depicts the spacecraft of NASA's Psyche mission near the mission's target, the metal asteroid Psyche.

Psyche

In August 2029, Psyche will arrive at a metal-rich asteroid with the same name.

Read More
NASA's NEO Surveyor is seen in this illustration against an infrared observation of a starfield made by the agency's WISE mission.

NEO Surveyor

NEO Surveyor will hunt asteroids and comets that are potential hazards to Earth. Launch is no earlier than 2028.

Read More
A gray spacecraft is illustrated over Venus with one of its instruments scanning the planet below.

VERITAS

VERITAS and DAVINCI will be the first NASA spacecraft to explore Venus since the 1990s. VERITAS will launch no earlier than 2031.

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Solar System Feature Stories

Pluto is reddish and has a heart shape lighter patch in the lower right half of this image from the New Horizons spacecraft.

Find Your Pluto Time

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two rocky asteroids in black space

What's That Space Rock?

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animation of clouds moving around Saturn's pole in a hexagonal formation

Storms Across the Solar System

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A full globe view of reddish Mars featuring Valles Marineris - which looks like a huge gash on the planet.

10 Things: Grand Canyons

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Eyes on the Solar System: A real-time visualization of our solar system using planetary science data.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Featured Resources

Explore curated collections of resources, including activities that can be done at home, as well as videos, animations, handouts, and online interactives. 

Artists concept of spacecraft at asteroid

Lucy Mission

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artist concept of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft with sampling arm extended

OSIRIS-REx

Explore
This artist's concept depicts NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft as it orbits Jupiter and passes over the gas giant's ice-covered moon Europa.

Ocean Worlds

Explore
A diamond shaped rocky object is shown side-by-side with another rocky object that has a bright point of light at its bottom right side.

Asteroids and Comets

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Featured Story

NASA’s Hubble Celebrates Decade of Tracking Outer Planets

Encountering Neptune in 1989, NASA’s Voyager mission completed humankind’s first close-up exploration of the four giant outer planets of our…

Read the Story
A montage of Hubble Space Telescope images of our solar system's four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, taken under the OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) program over 10 years, from 2014 to 2024.

Go Beyond Our Solar System

  • A close-up of a spiral galaxy, seen face-on. Its center is a bright white point, surrounded by a large yellowish oval with thin lines of dust swirling in it. From the sides of the oval emerge two bright spiral arms which wind through the round disk of the galaxy, filled with shining pink spots where stars are forming and more dark reddish dust. Many stars are visible in the foreground, over and around the galaxy.

    Hubble Images a Grand Spiral

    This Hubble image features spiral galaxy NGC 5643, which is located about 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus, the Wolf.

    Explore

  • A Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) coronagraph image of quasar 3C 273. It looks the same as the WFPC2 image, but in shades of blue. A black circle (labeled “core light blocked”) blocks the glare of the quasar. Blue-colored filamentary material is visible near the black hole. The extragalactic jet is still visible.

    NASA’s Hubble Takes the Closest-Ever Look at a Quasar

    Hubble has peered closer than ever into the throat of an energetic monster black hole powering a quasar. 

    Explore

  • A small flash of white light appears in the middle of a completely black image. The flash expands rapidly, glowing purple and consuming the entire image. The white light shrinks, returning to a pinprick at the center of the image. As it collapses, purple streams and waves pulse outward from white light’s center. Alongside the waves flow hundreds of small galaxies — spiral and spherical collections of dots of light. The galaxies race out from the center, starting as miniscule specks and becoming larger blobs and smudges as they draw closer, speckling the screen.

    Discover the Universe

    Learn about the history of the cosmos, what it's made of, and so much more.

    Explore

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Discover More Topics

Planets

A montage shows the planets to scale from Mercury on the left to Neptune on the right.

Moons

NASA Galileo spacecraft took this image of Earth moon on December 7, 1992 on its way to explore the Jupiter system in 1995-97. The distinct bright ray crater at the bottom of the image is the Tycho impact basin.

Asteroids, Comets & Meteors

Closeup view of a rocky, diamond-shaped asteroid in space

Oort Cloud

This image shows comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto as imaged in multiple exposures of infrared light by NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) space telescope.