Explore the Solar System in 3D: Planets, Moons and the Milky Way for Students

A solar system you can actually fly through

Textbook diagrams of the solar system lie twice: planets are drawn the wrong sizes and the wrong distances apart, because the real thing could never fit on a page. The Space section of Moyan Atlas 3D takes a different approach — a 3D solar system you can fly through freely, zooming from the whole Sun down to a single small moon.

Every planet uses real photographic surface imagery, so Jupiter actually shows its Great Red Spot, Mars is genuinely rusty red, and Earth shows real continents, clouds and oceans.

Realistic planets with real tilts

Each planet spins on its true axial tilt — Earth's 23.5 degrees, Uranus lying almost on its side at 98 degrees. This single detail answers a question students always ask: why does Uranus look like it rolls around the Sun? Because it does.

Saturn's rings are rendered from real ring imagery, and selecting any planet brings up a fact card with the essentials students need for class.

• Real photo surfaces for the Sun and all eight planets
• True axial tilts, including Uranus on its side
• Saturn's rings with real transparency
• Fact cards for every planet

Fifteen moons to discover

Zoom into a planet and its moons appear, orbiting as they really do. Earth has the Moon; Mars has tiny Phobos and Deimos; Jupiter shows the four Galilean moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto; Saturn shows Enceladus, Rhea and Titan; Uranus shows Miranda, Titania and Oberon; and Neptune shows Triton.

This is a natural springboard for questions: why does Europa interest scientists searching for life? Why does Titan have lakes? Let students find the moons first, then ask the questions.

Zoom out to the Milky Way

Keep zooming out and the solar system shrinks into a 90,000-star model of the Milky Way, with its spiral arms spread out below. Students can see where our entire solar system sits — one ordinary point in one ordinary arm of one ordinary galaxy among about two trillion others.

Pair this view with the Universe phenomena pages — galaxies, dark matter, the expanding universe and the Big Bang — for a complete introductory astronomy lesson.

Classroom activities

The space view runs in any browser, so it works on a classroom projector or on students' own phones and laptops. A few activities that work well:

• Planet hunt: call a planet, students fly to it and read one fact aloud
• Tilt check: find the planet that spins on its side (Uranus)
• Moon count: which planet's moons can students find the most of?
• Scale shock: zoom from Earth to the Milky Way in one continuous scroll