The Solarsystem

Introduction

Since ages mankind has gazed upon the night sky. The majority of the stars visible on the heaven appeared static to the ancients, but there were a few stars that appeared to change their position in time. They were called the wanderers, or the planets.
For thousands of years people thought that the planets, moons and Sun revolved around the Earth, and that the Earth was the center of the universe. When telescopes were invented in the seventeenth century, people began to question if this really was true. Some people who claimed that the planets did not revolve around the Earth, but rather the Sun, had to pay with their life for this, such as Giordano Bruno who was sentenced to be burned to death.
It is now known by astronomers that the moons orbit their planets and the asteroids, planets and comets orbit the sun. This conception of the world is called heliocentrism.

4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was created through the collapse of a nebula. Perhaps this collapse was triggered by the passage of a nearby star, or maybe a nearby supernova explosion.
Today the solar system consists of the sun at the centre, four rocky planets (terrestrial planets), an asteroid belt, four gas giants, yet another (smaller) belt of asteroids caled the Kuiper belt, another rocky/icy planet (pluto) and possibly a gas cloud very far away, consisting of ice chunks that send comets towards the center of the solar system, called the Oort cloud.

This part of the space art gallery contains information about the solar system in the past and in the present. The first pages are about how it was created and later on you can read about the sun, all of the planets, the asteroid belt, the kuiper belt, comets and even the oort cloud! On each page you will find space art or illustrations I've made.

In time more pages (and more space art and illustrations) will be added in this section, for example pages with information about moons to the planets in the solar system. I'm considering putting real-time 3D animations of some planets here in the future too.

Back to space art:
Space art introduction

Space Art gallery content

Solar system creation

The sun

Mercury
Venus
Earth - Upd. 21/3 - 06
Mars

The asteroid belt

Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune

Pluto
Comets