Links to Tours of the Solar System

A lot of excellent work has been done by planetary scientists to bring you the best information about the planets and the latest pictures from space missions. This set of links will take you to whatever solar system tour you would like. Fortunately, any of them will give you an excellent presentation.

The sites this page will connect you to are:

  1. U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Science Center. In the table below this is labelled as USGS. There is also the "Map-a-Planet" site for creating your own maps of the terrestrial planets and the larger jovian moons. The links below are to their "Astropedia" section. Also look into their "PILOT" (Planetary Image Locator Tool) site for accessing many tens of thousands of images.
  2. Welcome to the Planets at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In the table below this is labelled as WtP. Now a bit dated but go to the constantly updated NASA Photojournal to get many hundreds of thousands of recent images of all of the objects explored up close by spacecraft.
  3. Planetary Sciences at the National Space Science Data Center. In the table below this is labelled as NSSDC.
  4. Views of the Solar System by Calvin J. Hamilton. In the table below this is labelled as Views. He also has the tour in Spanish and Portuguese.
  5. The Nine Planets by Bill Arnett. In the table below this is labelled as NineP.

Planet USGS Wtp NSSDC Views NineP
Sun NA NA go to go to go to
Mercury go to go to go to go to go to
Venus go to go to go to go to go to
Earth go to go to go to go to go to
Moon go to go to go to go to go to
Mars go to go to go to go to go to
Jupiter go to go to go to go to go to
Saturn go to go to go to go to go to
Uranus go to go to go to go to go to
Neptune go to go to go to go to go to
Pluto go to go to go to go to go to
Asteroids go to go to go to go to go to
Meteorites go to go to NA go to go to
Comets go to go to go to go to go to

Planet Orbit Properties table

Planet Physical Characteristics table

Planet Atmospheres table

last updated: June 18, 2012

Is this page a copy of Strobel's Astronomy Notes?

Author of original content: Nick Strobel