A quick tour of our solar system

• Limits of Humanity: The observable universe goes on for light years & we'll only ever see 0.00000000001% of it (Kurzgesagt, Devour)
• Powers of Ten: The classic video from 1977 that explains the scale of space (YouTube)
• Riding Light: Travel with a beam of light in real time through our solar system (Vimeo, Alphonse Swinehart)
• A beautiful planet (IMAX)
• The Total Perspective Vortex: The machine from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that makes you feel so insignificant it will crush your soul (Hitchhiker Wiki)
• We need different types of telescopes to 'see' the different types of waves in the universe: radio, infrared, visible, X-ray, gamma (NASA)
• Telescope to seek Earthlike planet in Alpha Centauri system (The New York Times)
• The BoldlyGo Institute: Private space exploration (Boldy Go)
• Pluto is 7.5 billion km from Earth (Space.com)
• Live tracking: Where is Halley's comet now? (The Sky Live)
• Live tracking: Where are the Voyager probes now? (NASA)
• Voyager 1 is travelling at about 17 km per second (Wikipedia)
• It's believed that Voyager 1 is either in interstellar space or pretty close to it - that's the furthest we've sent anything (Wikipedia)
• NASA's 'eyes': Cool website where you can track all sorts of space things (NASA)
• The Deep Space Network: Live tracking of probes & stuff by telescopes on Earth (NASA)
• In about 30,000 years, Voyager 1 will have passed through the Oort Cloud & in 40,000 years it will pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445 (Wikipedia)
• What is the Kuiper Belt? A belt of icy bodies beyond Neptune (Cosmos, Swinburne University)
• What is the Oort Cloud? A hypothesised belt of icy bodies in the far reaches of the solar system (Cosmos, Swinburne University)
• It would take about 6 months to drive to the Moon at 95 km/hour (Science Focus)
• Apollo 11 took 3 days, 3 hours & 49 minutes to reach the Moon (Reference.com)
• What if Apollo 11 failed? President Nixon had a speech ready (Space.com)
• A moon is any natural satellite orbiting another body - planets, dwarf planets, asteroids & Kuiper Belt objects can all have moons (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
• Earth's moon's name is the Moon (caps M), it's also sometimes called 'Luna' (Wikipedia)
• Earth potentially has 18,000 moons, depending on your definition (Space.com)
• A star is a big exploding ball of gas - the Sun (caps S) is the name of Earth's star (Qualitative Reasoning Group, Northwestern University)
• When to capitalise the 'E' on Earth (Grammarist)
• The 'controversial' 2006 definition of a planet states: "a planet is a body that orbits the Sun, is massive enough for its own gravity to make it round & has 'cleared its neighbourhood' of smaller objects around its orbit" (Wikipedia)
• Pluto was stripped of its planet status in 2006 (New Scientist)
• Formation & evolution of the solar system (Wikipedia)
• How are planets formed? (Phys.org)
• Planets form in zones: The terrestrial (rocky) planets closer to the sun & the jovian (gassy) planets further out (LASP, University of Colorado)
• Order of the 8 planets in our solar system (Space.com)
• How was the Earth formed? (Space.com)
• What is a gravity well? (Qualitative Reasoning Group, Northwestern University)
• Where did Earth get its water? (Cosmos)
• Where did Earth's water come from? (livescience)
• What is the Goldilocks Zone & why does it matter in the search for ET? (ABC, Australia)
• What is Neptune made of? It's an icy, slushy, gassy planet with a rocky core (Space.com)
• Basics of orbital mechanics (NASA)
• What are Kepler's Laws? They describe the motion of planets across the sky (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
• An exoplanet is a planet that orbits a star other than our Sun (Wikipedia)
• 5 ways to find an exoplanet (NASA)
• If Planet 9 is out there, it tilts our solar system (The New York Times)
• What is Jupiter made of? It's very gassy, mostly hydrogen & helium, & we don't know if it has a solid core (Space.com)
• The Juno probe aims to unlock the secrets of Jupiter - it's currently orbiting & will crash into it in February 2018 (NASA)
• Juno has had a glitch, but is mostly ok (The New York Times)
• What is Mercury made of? It's a dense little nugget with a neglible atmosphere (Space.com)
• What is Venus made of? It's a hot, rocky planet (Space.com)
• Was Venus the first habitable planet in our solar system? (The Guardian)
• Venus spins very slowly, in the wrong direction (The New York Times)
• "Venus’s climate is strongly driven by the most powerful greenhouse effect found in the solar system" (European Space Agency)
• Carbon dioxide absorbs & re-emits infrared radiation (Center for Science Education)
• Predator's infrared vision (YouTube)
• What is Mars made of? It's very dusty & rocky, with a thin atmosphere (Space.com)
• NASA confirms evidence that liquid water flows on today’s Mars (NASA)
• They reckon Mars was warm & wet about 4 billion years ago (NASA)
• Exploration of Mercury: We've only sent 2 probes, 1 in 1973 & 2004, but there's another set to launch in 2017 called 'BepiColombo' (Wikipedia)
• List of solar system probes: We've been busy (Wikipedia)
• How the atmosphere affects our planet (Softpedia)
• The gas giants (Wikipedia)
• What is Saturn made of? It's pretty gassy, mostly hydrogen & helium (Space.com)
• How long do footprints last on the Moon? Potentially as long as the Moon (Space.com)
• Origin of Jupiter & Saturn: New theories on formation of gas giants (The Daily Galaxy)
• The case for Saturn being able to float on water (Universe Today)
• The case against Saturn being able to float on water (Wired)
• Planets & dwarf planets can have moons, & there are currently 182 identified in our solar system (Wikipedia)
• Mecury & Venus don't have moons (Windows 2 The Universe)
• Mars' moons are Phobos & Deimos; Jupiter has 67 moons, including the 4 that Galileo discovered; Saturn has 62; Uranus has 27; Neptune has 14, NB: Some moons are still awaiting official 'moon status' confirmation (NASA)
• Galileo made his own telescope & discovered 4 of Jupiter's moons in 1610, which got him into trouble with the Catholic Church (BBC)
• Saturn has some very cool moons, including the beautiful Enceladus with its icy gesyers (Space.com)
• Our moon is pretty big by moon standards (Windows 2 The Universe)
• How the Moon formed: Violent cosmic crash theory gets double boost (Space.com)
• Our solar system gets pretty chilly out past Mars (NASA)
• What might the sun look like from other planets? (Futurism)
• NASA's 'Pluto Time' shows how bright it is on dwarf planet (Space.com)
• Pluto may have clouds (The New York Times)
• Chemical properties of methane (Wikipedia)
• Methane is quite common in the outer solar system (University of Oregon)
• Ceres is a dwarf planet (Wikipedia)
• Charon is the largest of the 5 known moons of the dwarf planet, Pluto (Wikipedia)
• Pluto's unusual orbit (Smithsonian)
• You need a telescope to see Pluto (EarthSky)
• The hypothetical planet, Vulcan (Wikipedia)
• Gravity Probe A helped figure out relativity (Wikipedia)
• Gravity Probe B helped figure out the curvature of space-time near Earth (Wikipedia)
• Why did we land on a comet? (Mental Floss)
• Røde microphones

Corrections

• Woops! Lucy did bad maths: Light would travel a little over 1 billion km in 1 hour, not 65 billion km...so not as far as Pluto (Wolfram Alpha)
• Apparently we may have photographed an exoplanet: This is the first photo of a candidate 1,200 light-years away (Science Alert)
• More than 1,300 Earth's would fit inside Jupiter (NASA)

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