A quick tour of the Solar System! The nearest star! Our Sun… …it’s FAR more complex than just a “yellow ball of gas”!

Mercury Heavily cratered…

Venus… A dynamic geologic surface under a veil of clouds…

Venus revealed…

The 3 rd planet; the friendly “Blue Planet” observed from a nearby outpost…

The Earth is a geologically dynamic planet… great mountain ranges rise from its surface!

Our next destination…the Moon!

Looking back…

We have visited… and we will be back!

Apollo 14 Lunar Landing site!

A close-up! The Lunar Lander… Astronaut tracks…

Our next destination… Mars, the Red Planet!

A world of ice caps, clouds, winds, erosion…

Great canyons…

Cliffs carved by landslides…

Dunes formed by wind…

…and sheets of ice.

Phobos…one of two Martian Moons… …just large “rocks” a few miles across.

Jupiter…”King of Planets”… but only in OUR Solar System !

One of MANY moons of Jupiter… Ganymede

The volcanically active moon “IO”

Volcanic eruptions on IO… Eruption shadow!

Saturn…

Saturn’s moon “Tethys”

Saturn’s moon “Titan” is veiled by clouds, but a Titan probe revealed a complex landscape with river channels…

…and lakes and seas of Methane.

Next…the ringed- planet Uranus! It is now known that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus AND Neptune all have ring systems… only Saturn’s rings are easily seen.

Uranus…

Miranda Arial …and two of its many moons.

Neptune…

…with fascinating bands of clouds.

How about Pluto? Why have astronomers re-classified it as a “Dwarf Planet”?

It’s not unique! There are MANY such objects known! These are part of a vast collection of objects that form the KUIPER BELT…

More than 1,000 Kuiper Belt objects are now known ! The Kuiper Belt extends from just beyond the orbit of Neptune to the limits of Pluto’s orbit.

Comets… Asteroids… …and other pieces left over from the Solar System’s formation. And there are many other objects like…