TEACH YOURSELF PLANETS is a comprehensive guide to the Sun's family of planets and their moons, illustrating their surface features and explaining the processes that have shaped them. Extensively illustrated, this book describes the nature and origin of the solar system; looks at the internal structure, surface features and weather patterns of each planet and its major satellites; discusses the possibilities of finding life on other planetary bodies; covers asteroids and the icy bodies beyond Pluto; and explains how to see the planets in the sky.