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Field Guide to the Planets

Series: Field Guide to the Planets

4.8

(23)

Episodes

Rating

TVPG

Year

2019

Language

English

Publisher

The Great Courses

About

Get to know your planets with help from Professor Sabine Stanley's thrilling ride of discovery, illustrated by the phenomenal images NASA has gathered through its telescopes, cameras, and laboratories on Earth and among the stars. A Field Guide to the Planets offers a fuller picture of what scientists know about our solar system - and how much there is yet to learn.

Related Subjects

Episodes

1. How the Solar System Family Is Organized

31m

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!

2. Mercury, the Extreme Little Planet

31m

Mercury is a planet of many solar system extremes. It's the smallest planet, the closest to the Sun, and it has the shortest year, most elliptical orbit, smallest axis tilt, and largest fraction of iron. Learn how these characteristics have resulted in a planet where the Sun sometimes moves backwards across the sky, and where water ice has been found at the poles.

3. Venus, the Veiled Greenhouse Planet

32m

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.

4. Earth: How Plate Tectonics Sets Up Life

32m

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.

5. Orbiting Earth: Up through the Atmosphere

31m

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.

6. Exploring the Earth-Moon System

30m

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.

7. Humans on the Moon: A Never-Ending Story

32m

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.

8. Exploring Mars from Space and the Ground

32m

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.

9. Water on Mars and Prospects for Life

32m

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 been an Earth sibling that supported life? Learn about recent discoveries that will guide future exploration and scientific inquiry on the Red Planet.

10. Near-Earth Asteroids and the Asteroid Belt

33m

Fans of science fiction 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.

Extended Details

SeriesField Guide to the Planets

Closed CaptionsEnglish

Artists

The Great CoursesDirector

The Great CoursesProducer

Sabine StanleyActor