Science Astronomy

The Solar System Explained

A clear, practical tour of planets, moons, orbits, space environments, and exploration with Professor Victor Zane

The Solar System Explained logo
Quick Course Facts
19
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
19
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
6.2
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the The Solar System Explained Course

The Solar System Explained is a Science course that gives students a clear, practical tour of planets, moons, orbits, space environments, and exploration with Professor Victor Zane. Through focused lessons, you will build a confident understanding of how our solar system formed, how it works, and why it continues to shape modern discovery.

Explore The Solar System Through Evidence And Discovery

  • Understand the foundations of gravity, orbits, cosmic motion, and our place in space.
  • Compare rocky planets, giant planets, ice giants, moons, asteroids, comets, and distant icy worlds.
  • Learn how spacecraft, planetary defense, and scientific evidence reveal the history of solar system worlds.
  • Build practical Science knowledge for astronomy, space exploration, and planetary habitability.

A clear, practical tour of planets, moons, orbits, space environments, and exploration with Professor Victor Zane.

This course begins with the foundations of the Solar System, helping you map Earth’s place in space and understand the forces that govern planetary motion. You will study gravity, orbits, and cosmic motion before moving into the birth of the Solar System and the role of the Sun as its central engine.

From there, The Solar System Explained examines the inner rocky worlds, including Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, and Mars. You will explore planetary survival, runaway greenhouse conditions, impact history, climate change, water, and the search for evidence beyond Earth.

The course also covers asteroids, meteorites, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, ocean worlds, comets, Kuiper Belt objects, Pluto, and near-Earth objects. Along the way, Professor Victor Zane connects each topic to the Science of exploration, showing how spacecraft missions and planetary evidence help us understand both ancient history and future discovery.

By the end of the course, you will be able to explain the major worlds and small bodies of the Solar System with clarity, compare their environments, and understand how scientists investigate planets, moons, habitability, and space hazards. You will leave with a stronger, more practical Science perspective on the Solar System and your place within it.

Course Lessons

Full lesson breakdown

Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.

Foundations of the Solar System

2 lessons

This lesson builds the basic map learners will use throughout the course: where Earth sits, what counts as the Solar System, how distances are measured, and why scale matters. Professor Victor Zane in…

Lesson 2: Gravity, Orbits, and Cosmic Motion

20 min
Gravity is the organizing force of the Solar System. It holds planets around the Sun, moons around planets, rings around giant worlds, and spacecraft on carefully planned paths. This lesson explains g…

Origins and Structure

2 lessons

Lesson 3: The Birth of the Solar System

21 min
In this lesson, Professor Victor Zane explains how the Solar System formed from a cold, rotating cloud of gas and dust about 4.6 billion years ago. The lesson follows the sequence from nebula collapse…

Lesson 4: The Sun: Engine of the Solar System

19 min
In this lesson, Professor Victor Zane explains why the Sun is the central engine of the solar system: it contains almost all of the system’s mass, supplies nearly all incoming energy, and shapes plane…

The Inner Rocky Worlds

5 lessons

Lesson 5: Mercury and the Limits of Planetary Survival

18 min
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and one of the best places to study how rocky worlds survive under extreme conditions. This lesson explains why Mercury is not simply a hot version of the Moon…

Lesson 6: Venus and the Runaway Greenhouse

20 min
Venus is often called Earth’s twin because the two planets are similar in size, mass, and rocky composition, but their surface conditions could hardly be more different. This lesson explains how Venus…

Lesson 7: Earth as a Planetary Benchmark

19 min
Earth is not just our home world; it is the reference point scientists use to understand the other rocky planets. In this lesson, Professor Victor Zane explains how Earth’s size, density, atmosphere, …

Lesson 8: The Moon and the Story of Impacts

18 min
This lesson uses the Moon as a practical record book for the inner Solar System. Students learn why the Moon preserves ancient impact scars so well, how craters form, what maria and highlands reveal a…

Lesson 9: Mars: Climate, Water, and the Search for Evidence

22 min
In this lesson, Professor Victor Zane examines Mars as a world shaped by climate change, ancient water, active surface processes, and careful scientific investigation. The focus is not on Mars as a sc…

Small Bodies and Ancient Evidence

2 lessons

Lesson 10: Asteroids, Meteorites, and Planetary Building Blocks

20 min
Asteroids and meteorites are among the Solar System's best records of its earliest construction. This lesson explains what asteroids are, where they are found, how meteorites reach Earth, and why smal…

Lesson 15: Comets, Kuiper Belt Objects, and Distant Icy Worlds

19 min
This lesson examines the icy small bodies beyond the main planets: comets, Kuiper Belt objects, dwarf planets, centaurs, and other distant worlds. Students learn how these objects preserve evidence fr…

The Giant Planets

2 lessons

Lesson 11: Jupiter: Giant Planet, Miniature System

21 min
Jupiter is the Solar System's largest planet and the clearest example of a world that behaves almost like a small system of its own. This lesson explains Jupiter's bulk composition, rapid rotation, ba…

Lesson 12: Saturn, Rings, and Dynamic Moon Systems

21 min
Saturn is the Solar System’s most visually famous planet, but its rings are only one part of a much larger, active system. This lesson explains Saturn as a low-density gas giant, the structure and beh…

The Outer Solar System

2 lessons

Lesson 13: Uranus and Neptune: The Ice Giants

20 min
This lesson examines Uranus and Neptune as the Solar System’s ice giants : worlds larger than Earth but different from Jupiter and Saturn in composition, structure, climate, and magnetic behavior. Stu…

Lesson 16: Pluto and the Changing Definition of Planet

18 min
This lesson explains why Pluto was long treated as the ninth planet, what new discoveries in the outer Solar System revealed, and why astronomers changed the formal definition of a planet in 2006. Stu…

Moons and Habitability

1 lesson

Lesson 14: Ocean Worlds and the Possibility of Life

22 min
This lesson examines why several icy moons are considered some of the most promising places to search for life beyond Earth. Instead of focusing on sunlight at a planet’s surface, Professor Victor Zan…

Exploration and Evidence

2 lessons

Lesson 17: How Spacecraft Explore Planetary Worlds

21 min
Spacecraft turn distant planetary worlds into measurable evidence. This lesson explains how flybys, orbiters, landers, rovers, atmospheric probes, and sample-return missions work, and why each design …

Lesson 18: Planetary Defense and Near-Earth Objects

18 min
This lesson explains planetary defense as an evidence-driven process: find near-Earth objects early, calculate whether any pose a real impact risk, characterize their size and behavior, and choose a r…

Synthesis and Future Discovery

1 lesson

Lesson 19: The Solar System in Context

20 min
This lesson pulls the course together by placing the Solar System in its larger scientific context: one planetary system among many, shaped by gravity, chemistry, impacts, radiation, and time. Profess…
About Your Instructor
Professor Victor Zane

Professor Victor Zane

Professor Victor Zane guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.