A scroll-driven voyage
HELIOS
Start at the Milky Way. Dive to the Sun.
Fly past every planet, line-wise, out to Pluto —
and meet everything humanity sent along the way.
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Stop 1 · The galaxy
The Milky Way
100,000 light-years across. Somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars — and our entire solar system is one tiny glowing dot in one of its spiral arms. That pulsing marker is us.
Stop 2 · Between the stars
The stellar neighborhood
Leaving the galaxy behind, we pass our Sun's neighbours: Proxima Centauri (4.25 light-years, the closest star of all), Alpha Centauri (4.37), Sirius (8.6 — the brightest star in our night sky), and the red supergiant Betelgeuse (~640 ly away, big enough to swallow Jupiter's orbit).
Stop 3 · The ghost shell
The Oort Cloud
Before we reach the Sun, we cross a ghost shell: trillions of icy bodies orbiting 2,000–100,000 AU out — so distant that light takes over a year to cross it. This is where long-period comets fall from. No probe has ever reached it; even Voyager 1 won't arrive for another ~300 years.
Stop 4 · The star
Sol — the Sun
99.86% of all mass in the solar system. 5,500°C at the surface, 15 million°C at the core — 1.3 million Earths could fit inside it. Everything from here on orbits this furnace.
Parker is the fastest object ever built — 692,000 km/h through the corona. Aditya-L1 parks 1.5 million km away, watching the Sun full-time.
Stop 5 · Planet I
Mercury
The swift planet — a year here lasts just 88 days. No atmosphere to hold heat, so it swings from −180°C at night to 430°C by day. No moons.
Stop 6 · Planet II
Venus
The hottest planet — 465°C, hotter than Mercury, wrapped in crushing CO₂ skies. It spins backwards, and one Venusian day outlasts its entire year. No moons.
Stop 7 · Planet III · Home
Earth
The only known world with life — 71% ocean, one magnetic shield, one perfect distance from the Sun.
Stop 8 · Planet IV
Mars
The red planet hosts Olympus Mons, a volcano nearly three times the height of Everest, and valleys carved by ancient rivers.
Mangalyaan made India the fourth to reach Mars — on its first try. Perseverance is collecting samples in Jezero Crater today.
Stop 9 · The rubble sea
The Asteroid Belt
Between Mars and Jupiter drifts a failed planet — 1.1 to 1.9 million rocks over a kilometre wide, orbiting 2.2–3.2 AU out. Jupiter's gravity stirred the region so violently that nothing could ever clump together. All of it combined weighs less than 4% of the Moon.
NASA's Dawn orbited Vesta (2011) then Ceres (2015) — and Psyche launched in 2023 to visit an asteroid made almost entirely of metal.
Stop 10 · Planet V · The giant
Jupiter
The king — 1,300 Earths could fit inside. Its Great Red Spot is a storm wider than our entire planet, raging for centuries.
Stop 11 · Planet VI · The jewel
Saturn
Rings of ancient ice and rock, wider than the Earth–Moon distance yet often just metres thick. Saturn is light enough to float in water.
Stop 12 · Planet VII · The sideways world
Uranus
Knocked on its side — it rolls around the Sun at a 98° tilt. Methane paints it teal, and its atmosphere plunges to −224°C, the coldest of any planet.
Stop 13 · Planet VIII · The windy world
Neptune
Found by mathematics before any telescope saw it. Supersonic winds hit 2,100 km/h — the fastest in the solar system.
Stop 14 · The dwarf
Pluto
Demoted but beloved — a dwarf planet with a heart-shaped glacier bigger than Texas, and a moon, Charon, half its own size.
Stop 15 · Pluto's neighborhood
The Kuiper Belt
We never left the debris behind — Pluto lives inside it. A donut of icy worlds 30–55 AU out, with 3,000+ known objects: Eris, Haumea, Makemake… Pluto is just the most famous resident.
Stop 16 · Interstellar
The Voyagers
Voyager 1 (NASA, 1977) is the farthest human-made thing in existence — 15+ billion miles out, in interstellar space since 2012, still phoning home. Voyager 2 (1977) visited all four giant planets — the only probe ever to do it. Both carry the Golden Record: the sounds of Earth, in case someone finds them.
Final stop
THE FAMILY
PORTRAIT
Eight planets, one dwarf, 290+ known moons, a ghost shell of comets — and a handful of our machines sailing through it all. You just crossed 9 billion kilometres by scrolling.
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