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Guided tour · 13 stops
🚀 The great journey
From the Sun to the edge of the Solar System – the classic in 13 stops.
- The Sun
Our journey begins at the Sun. It is a perfectly ordinary star – and yet it holds almost all the mass of the Solar System. Deep inside it, millions of tonnes of hydrogen fuse every second, producing the light without which there would be no life on Earth.
- Mercury
Mercury is the smallest planet and the closest to the Sun. By day it gets hotter than 400 degrees, and at night it drops to minus 180 degrees – because it has no blanket of air to hold the warmth.
- Venus
Venus is almost as big as Earth, but it is a true hell. Its dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide traps the heat: around 465 degrees – hot enough to melt lead.
- Earth
Our home – the only place where we know there is life. Liquid water, a protective blanket of air and a magnetic field make Earth something very special.
- The Moon
Our Moon probably formed when a body as big as Mars collided with the young Earth. Twelve people have walked on it so far – their footprints can still be seen today.
- Mars
The red planet has the highest volcano and the largest canyon in the Solar System. Rivers once flowed here – today rovers are searching for traces of past life.
- The Asteroid Belt
Between Mars and Jupiter, millions of lumps of rock circle the Sun. They are building material that never became a planet – Jupiter's gravity prevented it.
- Jupiter
Jupiter is the king of the planets: all the others together would fit inside it. Its Great Red Spot is a storm bigger than Earth that has been raging for centuries.
- Saturn
Saturn wears the most magnificent rings – billions of chunks of ice, from the size of a grain of dust to the size of a house. Although it is huge, it is so light that it would float in a gigantic bathtub.
- Uranus
Uranus lies on its side and rolls, so to speak, around the Sun – probably the result of a tremendous collision. Because of this, one pole has 42 years of daylight followed by 42 years of night.
- Neptune
Neptune is the outermost planet. The fastest winds in the Solar System blow here, at over 2,000 kilometres per hour. It takes 165 years to travel once around the Sun.
- Pluto
Pluto was regarded as the ninth planet until 2006. Since the visit by New Horizons we know that it has a giant heart of nitrogen ice, mountains of water ice and a blue sky.
- The Kuiper Belt
Beyond Neptune begins the realm of the icy bodies. Many comets come from here. And much further out still, interstellar space begins – so far only the Voyager probes have flown there. This is the end of our journey!
In the 3D model the camera flies from stop to stop. The narrator’s voice is computer-generated.
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