Planets in Order: Interactive Solar System in 2D and 3D

The planets in order from the Sun

Our solar system is the Sun and everything that orbits it: eight planets, their moons, dwarf planets like Pluto, and millions of asteroids and comets. Here are the eight planets in order, starting with the one closest to the Sun, using distances from the NASA Planetary Fact Sheet.

An AU, or astronomical unit, is Earth's average distance from the Sun, about 149.6 million kilometers (93 million miles). It's a handy yardstick: Jupiter is about 5 AU out, so it's about five times as far from the Sun as we are.

Moon counts change as astronomers find new small moons around the giant planets. The numbers above follow NASA Science and NASA JPL's satellite list as of October 2026. NASA's Planetary Fact Sheet, last updated in March 2025, still shows older totals (95 for Jupiter, 274 for Saturn and 28 for Uranus).

How to remember the planets in order

The easiest trick is a mnemonic: a silly sentence where each word starts with the same letter as a planet. The most famous one is:

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Some kids prefer "My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming." Making your own is even better, because a sentence you invented sticks. Use the mnemonic maker under the diagram: it checks that each word starts with the right letter and remembers your sentence on this device.

Two more memory hooks help:

• Two groups of four. The four small rocky planets come first, then the asteroid belt, then the four giants.
• Big, bigger, then smaller. Size climbs from Mercury to Earth, drops at Mars, peaks at Jupiter, then shrinks: Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

When your child can recite the order, test it with the "Order it" quiz above. It asks which planet comes after each one, starting from the Sun, and keeps your best time.

Rocky planets and giant planets

The planets come in two families, and the difference explains a lot about the solar system.

The inner, rocky planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. They're small and dense, with solid surfaces of rock and metal cores. Close to the young Sun it was too warm for ice to survive, so only rock and metal could clump together.

The outer, giant planets formed in the cold beyond the asteroid belt, where ice was plentiful. They grew big enough to pull in huge amounts of hydrogen and helium gas.

• Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants, made mostly of hydrogen and helium, with no solid surface to stand on.
• Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. NASA says 80 percent or more of their mass is a hot, dense fluid of water, methane and ammonia over a small rocky core.

All four giants have rings. Saturn's are bright and famous; Jupiter's, Uranus's and Neptune's are faint and dark.

How big are the planets?

Planet sizes vary enormously. NASA's comparison makes it easy to picture: if Earth were the size of a nickel, Mercury would be about the size of a blueberry, Mars a raspberry, Neptune a baseball, Uranus a softball and Saturn a volleyball. Jupiter is about 11 times wider than Earth, and NASA's own comparison puts it at basketball size next to a grape-sized Earth.

The Sun dwarfs them all. It is about 1.4 million kilometers wide, about 109 times wider than Earth, and it holds about 99.8 percent of all the mass in the solar system.

The strip under the diagram draws the planets to scale with the edge of the Sun. It's the best way to see why "solar system model" kits can't be to scale in both size and distance at once.

How far apart are the planets?

Space is mostly empty. If you scaled the solar system down so Earth was 1 meter from the Sun, Neptune would be about 30 meters away and Mercury only 39 centimeters. The four rocky planets would all fit inside a circle about 3 meters across.

Light gives another sense of distance. Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth, 43 minutes to reach Jupiter, 80 minutes to reach Saturn and about 4 hours to reach Neptune.

Notice also that the gaps grow as you go out. Earth to Mars is about half an AU, Jupiter to Saturn about 4 AU, and Uranus to Neptune about 11 AU.

Why most solar system diagrams are not to scale

Draw the planets big enough to see, and the distances can't fit on the page. Draw the distances to scale, and every planet becomes a dot smaller than a speck of dust. That's why nearly every solar system drawing, poster and model squeezes the orbits together, as our 2D diagram does.

The 3D model lets you switch between the two. "Compressed" spaces the orbits evenly. "To scale" moves each planet to its real relative distance; zoom out and you'll need to look hard to find Neptune. In both views the planets are drawn much bigger than scale, or you couldn't see them at all.

What else is in the solar system?

The planets get the attention, but the solar system is crowded with smaller things.

• The asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter, about 2.2 to 3.2 AU from the Sun. It holds millions of rocky leftovers from when the planets formed, but they are so spread out that spacecraft cross it safely. All of them together have less mass than our Moon. The biggest, Ceres, is about 940 kilometers wide and counts as a dwarf planet.
• The Kuiper Belt starts near Neptune's orbit, about 30 AU out, and stretches to about 50 AU. It's a vast ring of icy bodies, including Pluto. NASA's New Horizons flew past Pluto in 2015 and past a small Kuiper Belt object called Arrokoth in 2019.
• Comets are balls of ice and dust that grow glowing tails when they swing close to the Sun. Many short-period comets come from the Kuiper Belt.
• Moons: the planets have hundreds between them, and some are bigger than Mercury. Jupiter's Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, and Saturn's Titan has a thick atmosphere and lakes of liquid methane.

Why isn't Pluto a planet?

In 2006 the International Astronomical Union, the group that names objects in space, wrote the first official definition of a planet. A planet must orbit the Sun, be massive enough to pull itself into a round shape, and have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit of other objects.

Pluto passes the first two tests but not the third: it shares the Kuiper Belt with countless other icy bodies, and some, like Eris, are about as big. So Pluto became a dwarf planet, along with Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake. Pluto is still fascinating. It is about 2,376 kilometers wide, smaller than our Moon, and has five moons.

Days and years on each planet

A planet's day is how long it takes to spin once, sunrise to sunrise. Its year is how long it takes to go once around the Sun. The farther out a planet is, the longer its year, because it has a bigger circle to travel and moves more slowly.

Two planets break the rules. Venus spins backward and so slowly that its day is longer than its year. Uranus is tipped on its side, so each pole gets about 21 years of sunlight followed by 21 years of darkness.

In the 3D model, the time-speed slider runs these real periods. Set it to one year per second and Mercury whips around four times while Neptune barely moves.

Ideas for a solar system project

The explorer and printables work well as the start of a hands-on project:

1. Scale walk. Put a ball for the Sun at one end of a hallway or field and pace out each planet using the AU column above (try 1 AU = 1 big step). Kids are always surprised how far Neptune is.
2. 3D solar system model. Use foam balls or clay for the planets. Pick one scale for sizes (Jupiter about 11 times Earth's width), and note on a card that the distances aren't to scale.
3. Solar system drawing. Print the labeled planets in order sheet as a guide, then draw and color your own, adding the asteroid belt and Saturn's rings.
4. Planet report. Pick one planet and use its page, such as facts about Mars, for a one-page fact sheet.

To check learning, use the solar system worksheet with its word bank, or the harder label the planets worksheet. After the planets, explore why the Moon changes shape in moon phases for kids, or look inside our own planet with the layers of the Earth.

Teaching the solar system at home

Most science standards introduce the Sun, Moon and planets in the early grades and come back to the solar system in more depth in middle school, with gravity, orbits and scale. Our explorer covers both: younger children can tap and listen while older students use the data table and the scale strip.

If you want a full science program that builds on this, see our guide to the best homeschool science curriculum or browse science programs. Many families save programs to a wishlist and check whether a scholarship or education savings account in their state may help cover the cost.