Heliocodex

The Sun, its worlds and everything beyond

Our corner of the universe, at its true size

Real photographs and real measurements, from the Sun out to the oldest light there is. Fly through it in 3D, learn how it works in short lessons, or step outside and find what is above you tonight.

Enter the 3D solar systemStart learning

The Sun as a glowing orange-red ball, mottled and streaked with dark filaments, with flame-like prominences at its edge.
  1. A grey globe covered in craters of every size, some with bright rays.Mercury
  2. A smooth cream-white globe with faint tan swirls of cloud.Venus
  3. The whole Earth, with Africa, the white ice of Antarctica and swirls of cloud over blue sea.Earth
  4. A rust-orange globe with dark markings, a white polar cap and a long canyon across its middle.Mars
  5. A globe banded in cream, orange and rust, with the round Great Red Spot below the middle.Jupiter
  6. A pale gold globe circled by wide, thin rings seen at a slant.Saturn
  7. A plain pale blue-green globe with almost no markings.Uranus
  8. A deep blue globe with a dark oval spot and thin white streaks of cloud.Neptune
The Sun and its eight planets in real spacecraft photographs, all drawn to one scale. The distances would never fit: at this size, Neptune would be about 5 kilometres off to the right. See it at true size and distance.
The 3D view: Mars close up against black space, with a small round map of the planets’ orbits in the corner and zoom buttons at the side.

Explore in 3D

The whole Solar System, where it is today

Every planet and its main moons in their real places, worked out from NASA’s orbital data. Click a world to glide to it, zoom out past the stars to the Milky Way and the cosmic web, or switch on easier to see to make the planets large enough to spot. Works on a phone.

Enter the 3D solar system

The planets

All planets, with their numbers

Learn

All 101 lessons, by subject

Look up

For the sky over your own head, and for looking things up.