Our solar system, in motion

What is included

All eight planets; the five recognized dwarf planets Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris; and all 465 cataloged moons of those bodies in this snapshot. That includes 115 at Jupiter, 293 at Saturn, 29 at Uranus, 16 at Neptune, five at Pluto, and the smaller systems. Mercury, Venus and Ceres have no known moons.

The asteroid belt and Kuiper Belt are representative particle populations, not an inventory of every small body. Vesta, Pallas and Hygiea are selectable examples. Moons of other minor planets, unnamed ring particles, the Oort Cloud, spacecraft and comets are outside this version’s catalog. New discoveries will change the counts.

Scale and visibility

Explore spreads orbital radii logarithmically and enlarges bodies so whole systems are readable. Individual orbit eccentricities and inclinations remain modeled, but distances between different orbits and body-size ratios are not to scale. True distances restores shared distance scale. True distances & sizes also restores physical radii where known. Tiny markers remain selectable; an unknown-radius moon is an outlined marker, not a measured sphere.

Moons are shown in their planet’s system view. They cannot be resolved together with the full solar system at one physical scale. Every catalog entry is available in the moon browser. “Large moons” changes camera framing; it does not remove other moons.

Motion and uncertainty

Every orbit and known rotation uses one shared time multiplier. Fixed Kepler ellipses show general motion, not a dated ephemeris or an N-body integration. Initial phases come from mixed source epochs and are illustrative. Planetary orbital shapes use JPL elements; satellite frames correctly distinguish ecliptic, equatorial and local Laplace planes. Known moon masses shift the parent around the approximate system center of mass.

Regular moons marked synchronous use one spin per orbit; axial precession, libration beyond the simple ellipse, mutual perturbations and changing Laplace planes are omitted. Unknown and chaotic rotations are not invented. The two Saturn ring moonlets use observed orbital radii with illustrative circular ring-plane paths. MK2’s preliminary period and radius are shown, while its plane orientation remains illustrative.

At high time speeds a spinning body can appear to reverse because of screen sampling. Slow the clock to inspect rotation. The Sun’s equatorial rotation is approximated as rigid; gas-planet winds, eclipses and ring shadows are not modeled.

Full-system through-space trails use a local, straight approximation to galactic motion at 230 km/s. The camera travels with the Sun. Each world also has a through-space view: the camera follows its current system center, while trails combine its orbit around the Sun with each moon’s local orbit. Choose “The Sun” for heliocentric motion or “The galaxy” to add the same 230 km/s galactic translation. Trail distances share one physical scale; spacing compression is disabled in both through-space views. The full orbit around the Milky Way takes roughly 230 million years; these trails show only a tiny local segment. Stars in the background are decorative. The guided journey starts close to the four inner planets with compressed orbital spacing, expands it to true distances, then looks back along one year of galactic trails. The camera stays close during the reveal and pulls back to the outer planets and Pluto at the end. The close view foreshortens the trails through perspective; it does not compress their physical lengths. Bodies remain enlarged. This transition illustrates a change of reference frame, not an acceleration of the Sun. Both the Sun-relative and galactic views are valid; the Sun does not lead a rigid vortex of planets.

Sources and spacecraft imagery

JPL moon discovery catalog · JPL satellite mean elements · JPL satellite sizes and masses · Planetary elements · JPL small-body database · NASA/NAIF spin poles.

Haumea moons: Ragozzine & Brown (2009) · Dysnomia: Holler et al. (2021) · MK2: Bamberger (2025), preliminary preprint · S/2009 S2 discovery · Eris rotation.

Planet maps: Solar System Scope, CC BY 4.0. Galilean moon maps: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS. Pluto and Charon: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI. Some are processed-color or grayscale mosaics. Gray patterned areas represent missing map data, not surface terrain. Bodies without maps use plain representative colors. Titan is shown with opaque haze, not a fictitious surface map. Full image credits and limitations.