Portal:Solar System

The Solar System Portal

The Sun and planets of the Solar System (distances not to scale)

The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a dense region of a molecular cloud collapsed, forming the Sun and a protoplanetary disc. The Sun is a typical star that maintains a balanced equilibrium by the fusion of hydrogen into helium at its core, releasing this energy from its outer photosphere. Astronomers classify it as a G-type main-sequence star.

The largest objects that orbit the Sun are the eight planets. In order from the Sun, they are four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars); two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn); and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). All terrestrial planets have solid surfaces. Inversely, all giant planets do not have a definite surface, as they are mainly composed of gases and liquids. Over 99.86% of the Solar System's mass is in the Sun and nearly 90% of the remaining mass is in Jupiter and Saturn.

There is a strong consensus among astronomers that the Solar System has at least nine dwarf planets: Ceres, Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, Makemake, Gonggong, Eris, and Sedna. There are a vast number of small Solar System bodies, such as asteroids, comets, centaurs, meteoroids, and interplanetary dust clouds. Some of these bodies are in the asteroid belt (between Mars's and Jupiter's orbit) and the Kuiper belt (just outside Neptune's orbit). Six planets, seven dwarf planets, and other bodies have orbiting natural satellites, which are commonly called 'moons'.

The Solar System is constantly flooded by the Sun's charged particles, the solar wind, forming the heliosphere. Around 75–90 astronomical units from the Sun, the solar wind is halted, resulting in the heliopause. This is the boundary of the Solar System to interstellar space. The outermost region of the Solar System is the theorized Oort cloud, the source for long-period comets, extending to a radius of 2,000–200,000 AU. The closest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri, is 4.25 light-years (269,000 AU) away. Both stars belong to the Milky Way galaxy. (Full article...)

Selected article –

Oberon, as photographed by Voyager 2 in 1986

Oberon is the outermost major moon of the planet Uranus. It is the second largest and second most massive of Uranian moons, and the ninth most massive moon in the Solar System. Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, Oberon is named after a character in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Its orbit lies partially outside Uranus's magnetosphere. Oberon consists of approximately equal amounts of ice and rock, and is likely differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle. A layer of liquid water may be present at the core/mantle boundary. The surface of Oberon, which is dark and slightly red in color, appears to have been primarily shaped by asteroid and comet impacts. It is covered by numerous impact craters reaching 210 km in diameter. Oberon possesses a system of canyons (scarps) formed as a result of the expansion of its interior during its early evolution. This moon probably formed from the accretion disk that surrounded Uranus just after the planet's formation. As of 2010, the Uranian system has been studied up close only once: by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in January 1986. It took several images of Oberon, which allowed mapping of about 40% of the moon’s surface. (Full article...)

More selected articles

Selected picture

• 
  Mimas (moon)

  Photo: NASA/JPL/SSI

  Saturn's moon Mimas, as imaged by the Cassini spacecraft. It was discovered on 17 September 1789 by English astronomer William Herschel, and was named after Mimas, a son of Gaia in Greek mythology, by Herschel's son John. The large Herschel Crater is the dominating feature of the moon. With a diameter of 396 km (246 mi), it is the smallest astronomical body that is known to be rounded due to self-gravitation.
• 
  The Blue Marble

  Photo credit: The Apollo 17 crew

  The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of Earth. NASA officially credits the image to the entire Apollo 17 crew — Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Jack Schmitt — all of whom took photographic images during the mission. Apollo 17 passed over Africa during daylight hours and Antarctica is also illuminated. The photograph was taken approximately five hours after the spacecraft's launch, while en route to the Moon. Apollo 17, notably, was the last manned lunar mission; no humans since have been at a range where taking a "whole-Earth" photograph such as "The Blue Marble" would be possible.
• 

  

  Jupiter

  Jupiter

  Credit: Cassini probe

  Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest within the Solar System. It is 318 times more massive than Earth, with a diameter 11 times that of Earth, and with a volume 1300 times that of Earth. Its best known feature is the Great Red Spot, a storm larger than Earth, which was first observed by Galileo four centuries ago. This picture, taken by the Cassini orbiter was one of 26 thousand images taken of Jupiter during the course of its flyby and is the most detailed global color portrait of the planet ever produced.
• 
  Rhea

  Photo credit: Cassini orbiter

  Rhea, at 1,528 kilometres (949 mi) across, is the second-largest moon of Saturn and the ninth largest moon in the Solar System. It was discovered in 1672 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who named it after the Titan Rhea of Greek mythology, "mother of the gods".
  
  The giant Tirawa impact basin is seen above and to the right of center. Tirawa, and another basin to its southwest, are both covered in impact craters, indicating they are quite ancient.
• 
  Husband Hill

  Photo credit: Spirit rover

  A 360° panorama taken during the descent from the summit of Husband Hill, one of the Columbia Hills in Gusev crater, Mars. This stitched image is composed of 405 individual images taken with five different filters on the panoramic camera over the course of five Martian days.
• 
  Olympus Mons

  Image credit: United States Geological Survey

  A composite image of Olympus Mons on Mars, the tallest known volcano and mountain in the Solar System. This image was created from black-and-white imagery from the USGS's Mars Global Digital Image Mosaic and color imagery acquired from the 1978 visit of Viking 1.
• 
  Atmosphere of Jupiter

  Animation: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

  A 14-frame clip showing the atmosphere of Jupiter as viewed from the NASA probe Cassini. Taken over a span of 24 Jupiter rotations between October 31 and November 9, 2000, this clip shows various patterns of motion across the planet. The Great Red Spot rotates counterclockwise, and the uneven distribution of its high haze is obvious. To the east (right) of the Red Spot, oval storms, like ball bearings, roll over and pass each other. East-west bands adjacent to each other move at different rates. Strings of small storms rotate around northern-hemisphere ovals. The large grayish-blue "hot spots" at the northern edge of the white Equatorial Zone change over time as they proceed eastward across the planet. Ovals in the north rotate counter to those in the south. Small, very bright features appear quickly and randomly in turbulent regions, possibly lightning storms. The smallest visible features at the equator are about 600 km (370 miles) across.
• 

  

  Solar eclipse of 11 August 1999

  Solar eclipse of 1999 August 11

  Credit: Luc Viatour

  The solar eclipse of 1999 August 11, as seen from France. This was the most viewed total eclipse in human history, although some areas offered impaired visibility due to adverse weather conditions. The path of the Moon's shadow began in the Atlantic Ocean, before traversing Cornwall, northern France, southern Germany, Austria, Hungary and northern Serbia. Its maximum was in Romania, and it continued across the Black Sea, Turkey, Iran, southern Pakistan and India.
• 

  

  Mars

  Mars

  Credit: NASA

  Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, is named after the Roman god of war because of its blood red color. Mars has two small, oddly-shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos, named after the sons of the Greek god Ares. At some point in the future Phobos will be broken up by gravitational forces. The atmosphere on Mars is 95% carbon dioxide. In 2003 methane was also discovered in the atmosphere. Since methane is an unstable gas, this indicates that there must be (or have been within the last few hundred years) a source of the gas on the planet.
• 
  Iapetus

  Photo credit: Cassini orbiter

  False-color mosaic shows the entire hemisphere of Iapetus (1,468 km or 912 mi across) visible from the Cassini orbiter on the outbound leg of its encounter with the two-toned moon of Saturn in September 2007. The central longitude of the trailing hemisphere is 24 degrees to the left of the image's center. It is hypothesized that the moon's two-toned nature is due to the sublimation of various ices evaporated from the warmer parts of the surface.
• 
  Pluto

  Photograph: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute

  Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond Neptune. Discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Pluto was originally considered to be the ninth planet from the Sun. Following the discovery of several objects of similar size in the Kuiper belt, its status as a planet was questioned, and in 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) gave a definition of the term "planet" that excluded Pluto. The largest and second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System, Pluto is primarily made of ice and rock. It is relatively small, with a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit.
  
  This photograph of Pluto is a composite of four near-true color images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. The most prominent feature in the image, the bright, youthful, nitrogen ice plains of Sputnik Planitia, the left lobe of heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio, is at right center. This contrasts with the darker, more cratered terrain of Cthulhu Macula at lower left.
• 
  Planum Boreum

  Photo credit: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

  False-color Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image of a side of the Chasma Boreale, a canyon in the polar ice cap of the Planum Boreum (north pole of Mars). Light browns are layers of surface dust, greys and blues are layers of water and carbon dioxide ice. Regular geometric cracking is indicative of higher concentrations of water ice.
  
  The Planum Boreum's permanent ice cap has a maximum depth of 3 km (1.9 mi). It is roughly 1200 km (750 mi) in diameter, an area equivalent to about 1½ times the size of Texas. The Chasma Boreale is up to 100 km (62.5 mi) wide and features scarps up to 2 km (1.25 mi) high. For a comparison, the Grand Canyon is approximately 1.6 km (1 mi) deep in some places and 446 km (279 mi) long but only up to 24 km (15 mi) wide.
• 
  The Day the Earth Smiled

  Photograph: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

  The Day the Earth Smiled refers to the date July 19, 2013, on which the Cassini spacecraft turned to image Saturn, its entire ring system, and the Earth from a position where Saturn eclipsed the Sun. Cassini imaging team leader and planetary scientist Carolyn Porco called for all the world's people to reflect on humanity's place in the cosmos, to marvel at life on Earth, and to look up and smile in celebration. The final mosaic, shown here, was released four months later and includes planets Earth, Mars, and Venus, and a host of Saturnian moons.
• 

  

  Five global views of Venus by Magellan.

  Magellan (spacecraft)

  Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory

  These images are composites of the complete radar image collection obtained by the Magellan mission. The Magellan spacecraft was launched aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis in May 1989 and began mapping the surface of Venus in September 1990. The spacecraft continued to orbit Venus for four years, returning high-resolution images, altimetry, thermal emissions and gravity maps of 98 percent of the surface. Magellan spacecraft operations ended on October 12, 1994, when the radio contact was lost with the spacecraft during its controlled descent into the deeper portions of the Venusian atmosphere.
• 
  Jupiter

  Diagram: Kelvin Song

  A diagram of Jupiter showing a model of the planet's interior, with a rocky core overlaid by a deep layer of liquid metallic hydrogen and an outer layer predominantly of molecular hydrogen. Jupiter's true interior composition is uncertain. For instance, the core may have shrunk as convection currents of hot liquid metallic hydrogen mixed with the molten core and carried its contents to higher levels in the planetary interior. Furthermore, there is no clear physical boundary between the hydrogen layers—with increasing depth the gas increases smoothly in temperature and density, ultimately becoming liquid.
• 

  

  Sunspot TRACE image

  Sunspot

  Credit: NASA/TRACE

  A TRACE image of sunspots on the surface, or photosphere, of the Sun from September 2002, is taken in the far ultraviolet on a relatively quiet day for solar activity. However, the image still shows a large sunspot group visible as a bright area near the horizon. Although sunspots are relatively cool regions on the surface of the Sun, the bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots have a temperature of over one million °C (1.8 million °F). The high temperatures are thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma.
• 

  

  Earthrise, as seen by Apollo 8

  Apollo 8

  Credit: William Anders

  Earthrise, the first occasion in which humans saw the Earth seemingly rising above the surface of the Moon, taken during the Apollo 8 mission on December 24, 1968. This view was seen by the crew at the beginning of its fourth orbit around the Moon, although the first photograph taken was in black-and-white. Note that the Earth is in shadow here. A photo of a fully lit Earth would not be taken until the Apollo 17 mission.
• 

  

  Comet Hale-Bopp 29-03-1997

  Comet Hale–Bopp

  Credit: Philipp Salzgeber

  Comet Hale–Bopp sails across the sky in the vicinity of Pazin in Istria, Croatia. To the lower right of the comet the Andromeda Galaxy is also faintly visible. The comet was visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months, twice as long as the Great Comet of 1811. At perihelion, it shone brighter than any star in the sky except Sirius, and its two tails stretched 30-40 degrees across the sky. The passage of Hale-Bopp was notable also for inciting a degree of panic about comets not seen for decades. Rumours that the comet was being followed by an alien spacecraft inspired a mass suicide among followers of the Heaven's Gate cult.
• 
  Retrograde and direct motion

  Image credit: Seav

  An animated image showing the apparent retrograde motion of Mars in 2003 as seen from Earth. All the true planets appear to periodically switch direction as they cross the sky. Because Earth completes its orbit in a shorter period of time than the planets outside its orbit, we periodically overtake them, like a faster car on a multi-lane highway. When this occurs, the planet will first appear to stop its eastward drift, and then drift back toward the west. Then, as Earth swings past the planet in its orbit, it appears to resume its normal motion west to east.
• 
  Mars

  Photograph credit: European Space Agency

  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is known as the "Red Planet" due to its reddish appearance as seen from Earth. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. A terrestrial planet, Mars has a thin atmosphere and surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of the Earth. The planet has the highest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, as well as the largest canyon, Valles Marineris. Mars's rotation period and seasonal cycles are also similar to those of the Earth. Of all the planets in the Solar System other than Earth, Mars is the most likely to harbour liquid water and perhaps life. There are ongoing investigations assessing Mars's past potential for habitability, as well as the possibility of extant life. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including NASA's Mars 2020 rover and the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Rosalind Franklin rover. In November 2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitia region of the planet. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped.
  
  This picture is a true-colour image of Mars, taken from a distance of about 240,000 kilometres (150,000 mi) by the OSIRIS instrument on ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, during its February 2007 flyby of the planet. The image was generated using OSIRIS's orange (red), green and blue filters.
• 
  Solar flare

  Photo: Goddard Space Flight Center

  A solar flare, a sudden flash of brightness observed over the Sun's surface or the solar limb which is interpreted as a large energy release, recorded on August 31, 2012. Such flares are often, but not always, followed by a colossal coronal mass ejection; in this instance, the ejection traveled at over 900 miles (1,400 km) per second.
• 
  Polar map of Jupiter

  Photo credit: Cassini orbiter

  This polar map of Jupiter, taken by the Cassini orbiter as it neared Jupiter during a flyby on its way to Saturn, is the most detailed global color map of the planet ever produced. The south pole is in the center of the map and the equator is at the edge. The map shows a variety of colorful cloud features, including parallel reddish-brown and white bands, the Great Red Spot, multi-lobed chaotic regions, white ovals, and many small vortexes. Many clouds appear in streaks and waves due to continual stretching and folding by Jupiter's winds and turbulence.
• 
  Titan (moon)

  Image credit: Cassini orbiter

  The most detailed full-disc view of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and second-largest in the Solar System. The brighter region on the right side and equatorial region is named Xanadu, and the large, dark region at the center is Shangri-la. This image has been processed to reduce the effects of the atmosphere and to sharpen surface features. It has been trimmed to show only the illuminated surface and not the atmosphere above the edge of the moon.

General images

The following are images from various Solar System-related articles on Wikipedia.

• 
  The planets, zodiacal light and meteor shower (top left of image) (from Solar System)
• 
  The motion of 'lights' moving across the sky is the basis of the classical definition of planets: wandering stars. (from Solar System)
• 
  The four terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars (from Solar System)
• 
  Diagram of the Milky Way, with galactic features and the relative position of the Solar System labeled. (from Solar System)
• 
  Overview of the inner Solar System up to Jupiter's orbit (from Solar System)
• 
  Relative size of the Sun as it is now (inset) compared to its estimated future size as a red giant (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  Location of the Solar System within the Milky Way (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  Animations of the Solar System's outer planets orbiting. This animation is 100 times faster than the inner planet animation. (from Solar System)
• 
  Diagram of the Sun's magnetosphere and helioshealth (from Solar System)
• 
  Plot of objects around the Kuiper belt and other asteroid populations. J, S, U and N denotes Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. (from Solar System)
• 
  The current orbits of Sedna, 2012 VP113, Leleākūhonua (pink), and other very distant objects (red, brown and cyan) along with the predicted orbit of the hypothetical Planet Nine (dark blue) (from Solar System)
• 
  To-scale diagram of distance between planets, with the white bar showing orbital variations. The size of the planets is not to scale. (from Solar System)
• 
  The outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, compared to the inner planets Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury at the bottom right (from Solar System)
• 
  Diagram of the Local Interstellar Cloud, the G-Cloud and surrounding stars. As of 2022, the precise location of the Solar System in the clouds is an open question in astronomy. (from Solar System)
• 
  Simulation showing outer planets and Kuiper belt:
  a) Before Jupiter/Saturn 2:1 resonance
  b) Scattering of Kuiper belt objects into the Solar System after the orbital shift of Neptune
  c) After ejection of Kuiper belt bodies by Jupiter
  

    Orbit of Jupiter

    Orbit of Saturn

    Orbit of Uranus

    Orbit of Neptune

  (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  Hubble image of protoplanetary discs in the Orion Nebula, a light-years-wide stellar nursery probably very similar to the primordial nebula from which the Sun formed (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  The orbital eccentricities and inclinations of the scattered disc population compared to the classical and resonant Kuiper belt objects (from Solar System)
• 
  Comet Hale–Bopp seen in 1997 (from Solar System)
• 
  Artist's conception of the giant impact thought to have formed the Moon (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  Orbit classification of Kuiper belt objects. Some clusters that is subjected to orbital resonance are marked. (from Solar System)
• 
  The Sun in true white color (from Solar System)
• 
  The Solar System (left) within the interstellar medium, with the different regions and their distances on a logarithmic scale (from Solar System)
• 
  Neptune and its moon Triton, taken by Voyager 2. Triton's orbit will eventually take it within Neptune's Roche limit, tearing it apart and possibly forming a new ring system. (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  The four largest asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, Hygiea. Only Ceres and Vesta have been visited by a spacecraft and thus have a detailed picture. (from Solar System)
• 
  Pierre-Simon Laplace, one of the originators of the nebular hypothesis (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  The Ring nebula, a planetary nebula similar to what the Sun will become (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  Diagram of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk, out of which Earth and other Solar System bodies formed (from Solar System)
• 
  Solar System diagram made by Emanuel Bowen in 1747. At that time, Uranus, Neptune, nor the asteroid belts have been discovered yet. Orbits of planets are drawn to scale, but the orbits of moons and the size of bodies are not. (from Solar System)
• 
  Animations of the Solar System's inner planets orbiting. Each frame represents 2 days of motion. (from Solar System)
• 
  The current Sun compared to its peak size in the red-giant phase (from Solar System)
• 
  Artist's conception of a protoplanetary disk (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  An artist's impression of the Oort cloud, a region still well within the sphere of influence of the Solar System, including a depiction of the much further inside Kuiper belt (inset); the sizes of objects are over-scaled for visibility. (from Solar System)
• 
  Meteor Crater in Arizona. Created 50,000 years ago by an impactor about 50 metres (160 ft) across, it shows that the accretion of the Solar System is not over. (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)

Did you know –

• ...that Yogi Rock (pictured) is a rock found on Mars by the Mars Pathfinder mission that looks surprisingly like Yogi Bear's head?

• ...that the Kuiper crater in the Kuiper quadrangle, named after Dutch American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, has the highest albedo recorded on Mercury?

• ...that 6Q0B44E, a recently discovered satellite of Earth, is thought to be a large piece of space debris?

• ...that 17th century philosopher Cesare Cremonini refused to look at the Moon's mountains through Galileo's telescope, because Aristotle had proved the Moon was a perfect sphere?

• ...that the south pole of the planet Mercury is located in the Bach quadrangle?

• ...that the Sweden Solar System is currently the world's largest scale model of the Solar System?

• ...that the dominant feature in the Shakespeare quadrangle is the 1300 km wide Caloris Planitia, the largest and best preserved impact basin on Mercury observed by the spacecraft Mariner 10?

• ...that the nearly circular shape of Lukanga Swamp, a wetland covering 2,600 km² in Central Province, Zambia, has led to speculation that it may be a crater formed by the impact of a meteorite?

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Wikinews Space portal

• April 7: NASA's helicopter Ingenuity survives its first night at Mars
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• November 29: NASA's InSight Lander makes it to Mars
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Major topics

Solar System: Planets (Definition · Planetary habitability · Terrestrial planets · Gas giants · Rings) · Dwarf planets (Plutoid) · Colonization · Discovery timelineˑ Exploration · Moons · Planetariums

Sun: Sunspot · Solar wind · Solar flare · Solar eclipse

Mercury: Geology · Exploration (Mariner 10 · MESSENGER · BepiColombo) · Transit

Venus: Geology · Atmosphere · Exploration (Venera · Mariner program 2/5/10 · Pioneer · Vega 1/2ˑ Magellan · Venus Express) · Transit

Earth: History · Geology · Geography · Atmosphere · Rotation

Moon: Geology · Selenography · Atmosphere · Exploration (Luna · Apollo 8/11) · Orbit · Lunar eclipse

Mars: Moons (Phobos · Deimos) · Geology · Geography · Atmosphere · Exploration (Mariner · Mars · Viking 1/2 · Pathfinder · MER)

Ceres: Exploration (Dawn)

Jupiter: Moons (Amalthea, Io · Europa · Ganymede · Callisto) · Rings · Atmosphere · Magnetosphere · Exploration (Pioneer 10/11 · Voyager 1/2 · Ulysses · Cassini · Galileo · New Horizons)

Saturn: Moons (Mimas · Enceladus · Tethys · Dione · Rhea · Titan · Iapetus) · Rings · Exploration (Pioneer 11 · Voyager 1/2 · Cassini–Huygens)

Uranus: Moons (Miranda · Ariel · Umbriel · Titania · Oberon) · Rings · Exploration (Voyager 2)

Neptune: Moons (Triton) · Rings · Exploration (Voyager 2)

Planets beyond Neptune

Pluto: Moons (Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, Styx) · Geology · Atmosphere · Exploration (New Horizons)

Haumea: Moons (Hi'iaka, Namaka) · Ring

Quaoar: Weywot · Rings

Makemake: S/2015 (136472) 1

Gonggong: Xiangliu

Eris: Dysnomia

Sedna

Small bodies: Meteoroids · Asteroids (Asteroid belt) · Centaurs · TNOs (Kuiper belt · Scattered disc · Oort cloud) · Comets (Hale–Bopp · Halley's · Hyakutake · Shoemaker–Levy 9)

Formation and evolution of the Solar System: History of Solar System formation and evolution hypotheses · Nebular hypothesis

See also: Featured content · Featured topic · Good articles · List of objects

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The planet Saturn, see here eclipsing the sun

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