I’ve been taking summer school courses in Astronomy this summer and boy has it been an eye-opener. Learning about the composition of stars, planets, and pretty much everything in the known universe has been fascinating to me. It’s hard to imagine and put into perspective just how vast (and mostly empty) our entire universe is, but this infographic at least sheds some light on just how big our solar system is.
From the rocky terrestrial Planets – heated craters of Mercury, hellish Venus, familiar Earth, and the faded glory of Mars – to the Gaseous Jovian Planets – giant Jupiter, beautiful Saturn, sideways Uranus and lonely Neptune – all the way out toward the Dwarf Planets – the club member Pluto all the way out to Eris, our furthest reaching planet orbiting the sun (taking almost 557 Earth years to complete one full orbit!). Our Solar System in itself is quite a journey. Launched almost 35 years ago, the Voyager 1 probe has traveled past our planets and beyond, but not even come close to one light-year away (distance at which light travels in one year) from Earth. Though, with probes like Voyager and it’s subsequent companions, we are now able to scan much more of the universe than ever before. It’ll only a matter of time before we finally find an extraterrestrial planet like our own. [Via]3.5k