Thanks, Carl Sagan.

When I was in Grade 8, a few of us would stay after school to watch Cosmos. The school was emptying out, Mr. Stokes, my science teacher, was grading our papers, and we were watching a TV on a trolley with an enormous video cassette player. I’d never heard of the show.

I remember the Vangelis music, the places Carl Sagan travelled to, and the way he took us back in time to meet people who were figuring out how the universe worked. He made their questions interesting, not just the discoveries they became famous for.

What stayed with me was the view from Sagan’s Ship of the Imagination: looking out into the vastness of space, then turning back towards Earth. That change in perspective was something I could feel, sitting in a classroom after school. Sagan’s voice and his way of explaining things simply were a big part of it.

This little solar system is a thank-you for an experience that’s stayed with me all these years.

Go on, mess with time. Turn years into seconds, or hit Reverse and wind the solar system back a few centuries. Pick a planet below for a closer look and a few surprising facts. Drag the whole solar system, or any planet in close-up, to find your favourite angle. It’s not Cosmos, but in my defence, they had Carl Sagan.