Earth Scale Explorer

太阳在银河系中的运动可能多次压缩日球层，让地球暴露于星际物质中。

约200-300万年前和600-700万年前，太阳穿越致密星际云，日球层剧烈收缩，地球或直接接触宇宙射线与氢气，可能改变大气化学与气候。

BU天体物理学家Merav Opher领导的COSMIC中心正整合银河系路径、氦-10同位素和古冰芯数据，检验这一跨尺度影响。

Spanish astronomers confirmed two planets around a red dwarf 337 light-years away.

• Inner world TOI-1752 b orbits in less than a day and may feature...

A new NASA educator guide lets students use ratios and proportions on real heliophysics images from SDO, Parker Solar Probe, and Hubble to calculate...

The five outer planets form a striking 121° predawn arc this month even though light takes 15–71 minutes to reach us from Mars, Jupiter, and...

With probes on Mars and deep telescopes, much of our solar system remains unexplored.

• Hidden oceans: Suspected under ice on Europa and Enceladus,...

The Sun and planets orbit a shared barycenter—their common center of mass—not the Sun's precise core.

• Right now that barycenter sits outside the...

Mercury's orbit marks the solar system's innermost scale, with Mars roughly four times more distant at 1.524 AU and Jupiter over 13 times farther at 5.2 AU, rendering Mercury's path strikingly compact by comparison.

A hypothetical observer aligned with Earth and Mars would fall inside NASA’s DSN radio beam 77% of the time from 2005–2024 — roughly 9.4 months per...

Earth reaches perihelion around 3 January at roughly 147.1 million km from the Sun—5 million km closer than at July aphelion—yet Northern Hemisphere...

The solar nebula's temperature gradient created a sharp divide at the frost line (~2.7 AU).

• Inside it, only refractory metals and silicates...

Friends built the first true-to-scale solar system model with complete planetary orbits on a Nevada dry lakebed. This experiential project turns abstract distances into a tangible walkable experience, ideal for grasping solar system scale.

Voyager Crossings at the Heliosphere Edge

• 🔥 Voyager Heliopause Distances: Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause in 2012 at 121.6 AU and Voyager 2 in...

The solar system ejects most of its comets like a gravitational slingshot, sending 95 percent into interstellar space—roughly 10,000 trillion...

At 25 light-years away, GJ 3378b feels distant—yet the Milky Way spans 100,000 light-years, making this super-Earth our next-door neighbor in cosmic...

Voyager 1 and 2 crossed the heliopause at almost identical distances—121.6 AU and roughly 119 AU—despite leaving through opposite hemispheres during...

Apollo astronauts placed corner-cube reflectors on the Moon in 1969, enabling laser ranging that measures Earth-Moon distance to millimeter precision....

An interstellar comet racing at 150,000 miles per hour on a hyperbolic orbit shows how vast solar system distances really are—its unbound trajectory means it will exit back into deep space after just weeks of visibility, not years.

NASA's Psyche spacecraft uses a Mars gravity assist to reach a metal asteroid in the outer belt.

• Total journey spans 2.2 billion miles from launch...

Walkable Solar System Models

• 🔥 Otford Village Model: A Kent village hosts what is thought to be the world's largest scale model of the solar...

Kamoʻoalewa sits 38–100 times farther from Earth than the Moon, yet still qualifies as a near-Earth object that appears to orbit our planet....