Where the planets are today
The Solar System is the Sun and everything bound to it by gravity: eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, and countless moons, asteroids, and comets. The map above is a live model of it. It opens on today and stays there, so what you are looking at is where the planets actually are right now. Nothing is drawn in a fixed spot: each body is placed by computing its real orbit from the same NASA/JPL data astronomers use.
- The date is shown under the map, with a Today badge while you are on the present.
- The table gives each planet’s distance from the Sun, its distance from Earth, and where it sits around the Sun, for whatever date is showing.
- Type a date to see any configuration between 1800 and 2050, then press Today to come back.
- Play / pause and speed run the clock forward from wherever you are.
- Fit to view / True scale switches between a compressed view (all orbits visible) and the real spacing.
- Dwarf planets adds Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris to the map.
- Click any body to open its page of facts.
Reading the table
Distance from the Sun is what sets a planet’s whole character: how much sunlight it gets, how cold it is, and how fast it moves. Distance from Earth is the one that changes fastest, because both planets are moving; watch it swing as you run time forward. Around the Sun is the angle each body sits at, measured from a fixed direction in space, so two planets with a similar figure are on the same side of the Sun as each other. That last column is the one to check when someone mentions a planetary alignment.
Why the inner planets race and the giants crawl
The most striking thing in the orrery is how differently the planets move. Mercury blurs around the Sun while Neptune barely inches along. That is Kepler’s third law: a planet farther from the Sun has both a longer path to travel and a slower speed along it.
The planets
In order from the Sun, the eight planets split into four small rocky worlds and four giants:
- Rocky (terrestrial): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars
- Gas giants: Jupiter, Saturn
- Ice giants: Uranus, Neptune
Each links to its own page with size, mass, orbit, moons, temperature, and a diagram.
The dwarf planets
Turn on dwarf planets to add the five official ones: Ceres in the asteroid belt, and Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris out in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. They orbit the Sun and are round, but unlike the eight planets they share their orbits with many other icy bodies, which is why they are classed separately.
The trouble with scale
An honest model
The planet positions come from real J2000 orbital elements (NASA/JPL), fed through Kepler’s equation, so the shape, tilt, and timing of each orbit are accurate to within arcminutes for the modern era. Three honest caveats:
- This is a 2.5D view of a three-dimensional system: the orbits are gently tilted, not seen edge-on.
- The method NASA publishes these elements for is validated from 1800 to 2050. You can run the clock past that to watch the outer planets come round, and the orbits stay the right shape and speed, but the map says so when you leave that window rather than presenting an extrapolation as a measurement.
- The dwarf planets are on the map but not in the table. Their orbits are the right shape and run at the right speed, but where each one sits along its orbit is representative rather than measured, so a distance for today would be wrong by a long way. Better to leave the number out than to publish one that looks precise and is not.
It’s free to embed on your own site or classroom page.