Cosmic Vistas

How humans discovered the planets and how a few moving lights in the sky became a rich and complex solar system.

Mercury offers us a look at a solid world and the forces that shape it. With substantially more matter and a thicker atmosphere, Venus tells an even more complex story.

Thanks to a fleet of advanced spacecraft orbiting around and even landing on the surface of Mars, a new portrait of this red planet is emerging.

The gas giants of the outer solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, represent very different kind of planets, with exotic atmospheres, liquid interiors and rings.

Looking to beyond the rocky and gaseous worlds, to the dark domain of Pluto and beyond, we may find the history of the solar system preserved for us in a deep freeze.