Introduction to The Nine Planets

The Nine Planets is a collection of information about our Solar System intended for a general audience with little technical background. No special expertise or knowledge is needed; all technical and astronomical terms and proper names are defined in the glossary. The bulk of this material should be familiar to planetary scientists and astronomers but they may find a few interesting tidbits, too.

This document consists of about 90 WWW "pages", one page for each major body in the Solar System. Each page has:

a large picture of its object and usually several smaller thumbnail images (all linked to their full-size originals)
some scientific and historical facts about it,
if the object has satellites then its page has a table of data on them and links to their pages,
links to more images and information about the object elsewhere on the Web, and
a list of open issues for which we as yet have no answers.

To truly justify the title of "Multimedia Tour", I've also included:

short sound clips from Holst's The Planets (about 10 seconds or 180k each) for seven of the planets;
sound clips of my mellifluous voice pronouncing some of the more unusual names;
links to "movies" of a few objects.

There are also a few miscellaneous pages: on planetary science spacecraft, the glossary, a comprehensive list of planetary images available elsewhere on the Net, some bits of history and several pages of data.

The pages of this document are organized in a hierarchy based on the primary-satellite relationship. In addition, there are many hyperlinks enabling the interactive viewer to jump around and view the pages in many ways. (If you "get lost" you can always jump back to the table of contents.)

At the bottom of each page is a set of links to other related pages. To visit the next body in an ordered traversal of the solar system choose the link immediately to the right of the name of the current page. You can also go back to the previous page, the "parent" page, the table of contents or to the detailed data page.

I've chosen ten of the most interesting bodies and linked them into an Express Tour. If you don't have time for the full tour, don't miss these.

Where to go next

The full tour continues with the Overview (or if you're in a hurry take the Express Tour). The names at the bottom of each page provide access to the next world in the full tour and a few other related pages; the icons provide access to the table of contents, the page of detailed data and this site's "home page".

... Introduction ... Overview ... Sun

Copyright 1996-2001 Eteläsuomen Rooli- ja Strategiapeliyhdistys ry.
All rights reserved. Copyright of all material is property of the respected owner.
Written by bill.arnett@wanderer.org on 02.01.2001.
This website is owned by Zorgon Pettersson Group Oy
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