Join an expert guide to get the most cutting-edge images and research of our galaxy-and see what the future of space exploration could look like.
A Field Guide to the Planets
Take a trip, that's (okay, okay, we'll say it) out of this world, with our helpful field guide to our solar system's iconic planets.
Rated 5 out of
5
by
EESteve from
Amazing series! Expertly presented.
Sabine Stanley does great job presenting the concepts. Some how she keeps it interesting, perhaps through her apparent interest in the subjects. Concepts are stated and explained with supporting evidence. I enjoyed this series on Amazon Prime.
Date published: 2024-01-30
Rated 5 out of
5
by
Jimbo66 from
Excellent presenter
I've very much enjoyed this planet series. The presenter is excellent.
Date published: 2023-12-23
Rated 5 out of
5
by
sp3orbital from
Pluto
I really enjoyed this course. Pluto is a planet. End. of Story.
Date published: 2023-11-18
Rated 5 out of
5
by
History addict from
She makes the solar system feel like home
This course in really exceptional. At first, I was put off by Dr. Stanley's rather static delivery (she seemed to be reading her carefully prepared text from a teleprompter) but once I became accustomed to her style, I found the course content highly engaging, and she becomes more relaxed and spontaneous as the course proceeds. She packs each lecture with a LOT of information, without exceeding the layperson's technical limitations, but be prepared to watch some of the lectures twice. The graphics she uses are the best I have seen in any TTC course. The summaries in her course guidebook are very complete. My only criticism is that her bibliography for further reading is rather skimpy.
Date published: 2023-03-05
Rated 5 out of
5
by
baylou555 from
a favorite
An excellent course, thoughtfully organized. While I loved physics, I didn't think I'd like a course that focused on the solar system, and I was proven wrong. It was both informative and entertaining. The presenter anticipated my questions and answered them thoroughly. I imagine that I will return to this course again and again to view select episodes.
Date published: 2022-11-30
Rated 3 out of
5
by
FargoChris2 from
Went downhill for me
This course starts of strong and progresses logically through the planets but then really starts to lose steam when it gets to Earth. The course loses any sense of organization and even though it ostensibly still flows outward to the exoplanets the lecturer jumps around so much its difficult to stay engaged. I went from really enjoying this course, to struggling to stay engaged, to not being able to wait until it was over. I'm a completist when I'm so deep into these courses otherwise I would've just given up around Lecture 15. I'd say definitely watch the first 5 lectures but after that hop around to the other topics within the course that interest you and see if you have the same struggles I did.
Date published: 2022-10-07
Rated 5 out of
5
by
JoeChemist from
Wonderful and packed with detailed information!
Dr. Mater narrates a wonderful course. It is so full of information that I have re-watched the course many times and always catch something new. Her relaxed style with a touch of humor is great! Love this course!!!
Date published: 2022-10-02
Rated 5 out of
5
by
Skhe from
Absolutely love this course. Beyond my expectations.
Date published: 2022-09-27
Overview
About
Sabine Stanley, Ph.D., is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. She received a HBSc degree in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Toronto and then completed M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Geophysics from Harvard University. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, Professor Stanley was a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a professor at the University of Toronto. At Johns Hopkins, she also holds appointments in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, the Applied Physics Laboratory’s Space Exploration Sector, and the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute.
Professor Stanley has received several honors and awards for both her research and teaching. Her research honors include the American Geophysical Union’s William Gilbert Award for her major theoretical contributions to the study of planetary magnetism, and her teaching awards include the Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Toronto.
Professor Stanley’s research includes studies of the magnetic fields of Earth, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and exoplanets. She is also a coinvestigator on NASA’s Mars InSight mission. In addition to her research work, Professor Stanley has served as the editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets and has chaired the Women in Physics Canada Conference.
Trailer
01: How the Solar System Family Is Organized
Since 1962, robots have been exploring our solar system to help answer this most important question: Who are we? With fascinating data and images now in hand, explore this family album overview of our planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects, and long-period comets—and fly through some of our solar system’s most unique features!
31 min
02: Mercury, the Extreme Little Planet
Mercury is a planet of many solar system extremes—smallest planet, closest to the Sun, shortest year, most elliptical orbit, smallest axis tilt, and largest fraction of iron. Learn how these characteristics and others have resulted in a planet where the Sun sometimes moves backwards across the sky, where water ice has been found at the poles, and a magnetic field that offers more protection than Mars’.
31 min
03: Venus, the Veiled Greenhouse Planet
While the Venusian carbon dioxide atmosphere has resulted in a runaway greenhouse effect and the hottest surface temperature in the solar system, the Earth and Venus actually contain about the same amount of carbon. Explore the forces that resulted in the extreme atmospheric differences between these two otherwise-similar planets.
32 min
04: Earth: How Plate Tectonics Sets Up Life
Given the striking similarities between the four terrestrial planets, why is Earth the only one teeming with life? Proposed as a bold theory less than 70 years ago, could plate tectonics be a main driver of life on Earth? Explore the fascinating movement of our planet’s surface and the many ways in which a geologically-active Earth has sustained our biologically-active planet.
31 min
05: Orbiting Earth: Up through the Atmosphere
Compared to Venus or the giant planets, Earth has a relatively thin atmosphere. And yet, without this single, fragile layer, life would not have evolved and thrived. Discover the unique properties of each atmospheric layer— and encounter specific ways we’ve explored each layer as a springboard to exploring the rest of our solar system.
31 min
06: Exploring the Earth-Moon System
Our Moon, formed from the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, is by far the largest moon in the solar system relative to its planet’s size. Explore the many ways in which this uniquely coupled system affects the tides on Earth and on the Moon, our rotation and revolution, the process of tidal locking, and even the planetary stability that has allowed for the development of life on Earth.
30 min
07: Humans on the Moon: A Never-Ending Story
Even before the invention of telescopes, humans were familiar with the dark lunar highlands and bright maria on the Moon’s surface. But now, with knowledge gained from both robotic and crewed missions, you can also explore fascinating and complex lunar swirls, sinuous rilles, and the lava tubes that hold promise as ideal locations for future lunar bases.
32 min
08: Exploring Mars from Space and the Ground
Humanity’s fascination with Mars is never-ending—from the days when we posited a planet covered in straight-line canals and vegetation to NASA’s current Moon to Mars program. Learn how the intriguing similarities and differences between Earth and Mars have resulted in Mars’ planet-wide dust storms, migrating polar ice caps, and 3.9-billion-year-old impact craters.
32 min
09: Water on Mars and Prospects for Life
Recent robotic exploration provides tantalizing evidence: Mars’ barren landscape could have been much more Earth-like in the past. With warmer temperatures, a thicker atmosphere, and the possibility of water oceans and tsunamis, could Mars have an Earth sibling that supported life? Learn about the thrilling recent discoveries that will guide future exploration and scientific inquiry on the red planet.
32 min
10: Near-Earth Asteroids and the Asteroid Belt
Fans of science fiction, or the natural history of our planet, know that a collision with an asteroid has the potential to obliterate civilization as we know it. With 20,000 asteroids identified in near-Earth orbit, how can collision be avoided? Learn why these rocky bodies, and those in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, never accreted into planets and how we might harness their resources for future space travel.
33 min
11: Mighty Jupiter, The Ruling Gas Giant
Does Jupiter have a greater similarity to the Earth or to the Sun? It depends on which characteristics you consider. Explore the many ways in which Jupiter is unique among the planets and consider what our solar system would be like without it. This gas giant might seem too far away to make a difference in your daily life, but without Jupiter, life on Earth might never have had a chance.
31 min
12: Jupiter’s Planetlike System of Moons
Today we know of 79 Jovian moons—the spherical Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, and dozens of other smaller, odd-shaped satellites. Learn why Jupiter’s gravitational forces plus the orbital resonance of the three interior moons make these some of the most promising places to search for extraterrestrial life—and why scientists believe the Jovian system once included generations of other moons, now gone.
32 min
13: Saturn and the Rings: Gravity’s Masterpiece
With its exquisitely complex ring system, NASA describes Saturn as the “jewel of our solar system.” Learn what decades of exploration have revealed about the origin and morphology of these ever-changing icy rings and how they interact with Saturn’s closest moons. From the rings to propeller moonlets, a massive hexagonal polar storm, and the giant vortex, our fascination with Saturn never ends!
32 min
14: Saturn’s Moons: Titan to Enceladus
With a system of 62 moons located in and far beyond its ring system, Saturn has outer moons that are some of the most fascinating worlds in the solar system. Learn why Titan and Enceladus hold such promise in our search for extraterrestrial life—from global subsurface oceans of water on both moons, to Titan’s Earth-like surface and organic molecules in its atmosphere. It’s no wonder that NASA has announced its Dragonfly mission to Titan, scheduled to launch in 2026.
32 min
15: Uranus: A Water World on Its Side
What a fascinating world Voyager 2 revealed in 1986 during its short flyby of Uranus! Learn why Uranus seems to orbit “on its side” surrounded by a delicate system of 13 rings and 27 moons, how we discovered its multi-polar magnetic field, and why scientists think Uranus might contain an ocean made of liquid diamond, with floating chunks of solid “diamond-bergs!”
32 min
16: Neptune: Windy with the Wildest Moon
Neptune is the coldest, but also the stormiest, planet in the solar system and the only planet that cannot be seen with the naked eye from Earth. Its moon Triton is the only spherical moon in the solar system that’s an irregular satellite that orbits opposite the direction of all the planets. Learn how tidal forces are not only changing that orbit, but also causing geologic activity on its surface—a surface that contains organic compounds.
32 min
17: Pluto and Charon: The Binary Worlds
Although Pluto is no longer categorized as a planet, Pluto the “dwarf planet” and its “moon” Charon are considered the closest thing in the solar system to a binary planet system. Explore the fascinating revelations from the New Horizons mission, including Pluto’s glacial flows, floating mountains, extreme seasons, unexpectedly complex atmosphere, and a surface that appears to be dusted in complex organic molecules.
31 min
18: Comets, the Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud
Learn why scientists believe comets—the “leftovers” of planet formation in the outer solar system—could be partially responsible for the flourishing of life on Earth, bringing both water and organic material to the inner solar system. And explore the more distant Oort Cloud, where billions of cometary objects orbit at the outermost boundary of the solar system.
32 min
19: How Our Sun Defines Our Solar System
Fly through the corona of what is by far the largest, most massive, and most significant object in the solar system: the Sun. In fact, at 99.9 percent of the total mass of the system, you could say the Sun IS the solar system. With its gravity, heat, light, magnetic fields, and plasma storms, learn how the Sun affects every object in the system—and how we are in a race to learn more about coronal mass ejections before one destroys trillions of dollar’s worth of electronics on Earth.
32 min
20: A Solar System Time Machine and Meteorites
Today we see an orderly solar system with planets staying in their orbits around the sun, moons staying in their orbits around the planets, and comets coming and going in predictable fashion. But how did it all start? Learn how a molecular cloud gave rise to a proto-planetary disk in which our solar system developed step by step across time and space—and is developing still.
32 min
21: What the Biggest Exoplanets Reveal
Planets orbiting other stars used to be purely in the realm of science fiction. How did we begin discovering them by the thousands? Learn about the methods scientists have used to discover so many exoplanets so quickly. From “hot Jupiters” to “mini-Neptunes” to planets whose clouds rain molten glass, these discoveries demonstrate that ours is not the only type of planetary system possible!
31 min
22: Closing in on Earthlike Exoplanets
Beginning in 2009, the Kepler Space Telescope began staring intensively at a single patch of sky, about one quarter of one percent of the sky. After staring for four years straight, scientists had identified about 1,200 new planets. Sift through the Kepler discoveries for planets with a variety of Earth-like features, including presence in a “habitable” zone, and learn why billions of Earthlike planets are estimated to exist in our galaxy.
31 min
23: Planets Migrated in Our Early Solar System!
The surprising detection of gas giant planets orbiting extremely close to other stars has led to the realization that planets can form in one part of a stellar system and then migrate to another part. Did that happen in our own solar system? Learn about the evidence for a “Late Heavy Bombardment” on the Moon, Mars, and Mercury, how migration of one or more giant planets could have caused it, and how such migration could have affected the solar system we see today.
31 min
24: Human Futures in the Solar System
What are the next big ideas that will help us ask and answer the next big questions? Consider the fascinating future technologies of centimeter-sized satellites propelled by laser photons, liquid mirror telescopes on the Moon, a magnetic shield large enough to help terraform Mars, and more. Nourish your imagination, and experience the inspiration of space exploration!
33 min
