Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Discovery and exploration of the Solar System is observation, visitation, and increase in knowledge and understanding of Earth's "cosmic neighborhood". This includes the Sun, Earth and the Moon, the major planets including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, their satellites, as well as smaller bodies including comets, asteroids, and dust. For many thousands of years, astronomers maintained a geocentric world view and did not recognize the existence of a Solar System. Most believed Earth was stationary at the center of the Universe and categorically different from the divine or ethereal objects
Sagan Planet Walk Sagan Planet Walk The Sciencenter's Sagan Planet Walk is a walkable scale model of the Solar System, located in Ithaca, New York. The model scales the entire Solar System—both planet size and distances between them—down to one five billionth of its actual size. Consisting of eleven obelisks situated along a path through the streets of downtown Ithaca, the Planet Walk leads from the Sun at Center Ithaca to Pluto at the Ithaca Sciencenter. The exhibition was originally created in 1997 in memory of Ithaca resident and Cornell Professor Carl Sagan. In 2012, the model was expanded to include a representation