Discover 8 planets and 5 dwarf planets through real mission images, little facts and a recognition quiz in English and Lithuanian.
Explore the eight solar-system planets and five IAU-recognized dwarf planets. Periods are approximate, and moon lists show selected examples.
Images are not shown at a common scale, and mission photographs may use enhanced colours. Schematics are not surface photographs; each image’s explanation accompanies its credits.
Mercury
Planet
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington · A globe projection of a mosaic assembled from MESSENGER photographs, rather than a single exposure.
Mercury is the smallest planet and the nearest to the Sun. Impact craters cover much of its rocky surface.
Despite being nearest to the Sun, it is not the hottest planet: Venus is.
Its extremely thin outer gas envelope retains little heat, allowing huge temperature differences between day and night.
NASA/JPL-Caltech; image processing: Kevin M. Gill · Mariner 10 cloud imagery combined from orange and ultraviolet filters. False colour; the surface beneath the clouds is not visible.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun and similar in size to Earth. Its thick, carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere traps intense heat.
It is the hottest planet in the solar system.
It rotates in the opposite direction to most planets.
One rotation takes about 243 Earth days, while a solar day, from one sunrise to the next, lasts about 117.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute · A New Horizons LORRI image combined with lower-resolution Ralph colour data: a composite of separate observations.
Pluto is a dwarf planet in the distant Kuiper Belt. Its icy surface has mountains, plains and glaciers.
It was classified as a dwarf planet in 2006; the object itself did not change.
New Horizons flew past Pluto in 2015 and photographed its surface close up.
BearNap · original schematic SVG · An original BearNap schematic showing an elongated body and a narrow ring. Not a photograph; proportions and viewing angle are illustrative. The NASA link is scientific context.
Haumea is an elongated dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt. Its unusually rapid spin is linked to its stretched shape.
Haumea has a ring, announced in 2017 after observations of a stellar occultation.
BearNap · original schematic SVG · An original BearNap reddish-brown schematic, not a photograph. No detailed surface features are represented; the NASA link supplies scientific context only.
Makemake is a distant dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt. Its surface appears reddish-brown, with detected deposits of frozen methane and ethane.
Makemake was discovered in 2005.
Its moon carries the provisional designation S/2015 (136472) 1 and the nickname MK 2, rather than an official proper name.
BearNap · original schematic SVG · An original BearNap schematic, not a surface photograph. Colour and lighting are illustrative; the NASA link supplies scientific context only.
Eris is a very distant dwarf planet, similar in size to Pluto. Its orbit is strongly tilted relative to the main planets’ orbital plane.
It was discovered in 2005 using images recorded in 2003.
Astronomers can use the orbit of its moon Dysnomia to determine Eris’s mass.
