Try taking these with that puny little iPhone

This surely violates copyright law, but I’m going to risk it to draw attention to what has to be the most wonderful collection of photos to grace a website.

These Smithsonian magazine shots give our solar system its due: shockingly beautiful in its alternating moods of violence and calm. The pictures originated during various space-exploration missions and I don’t think have been grouped this way before, displayed with such clarity.

Saturn, of course, is absolutely the best planet, just by virtue of its ever-present accessories. But the moons of Jupiter and Neptune look pretty snappy here too. Click through all the photos using the panel of dots below the description–and feel free to add appropriate background music of your choosing. (Viewers of a certain vintage might want to dig out the “Trick of the Tail” album by Genesis.)

I did experience one reality check: I was delighted when the first good photos of Mars started coming back, but these much sharper shots make it look like the site of the Burning Man gathering. Sorry, but I just can’t get excited about any event involving a lot of strangers in the desert unless it takes place on a big screen with Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif nearby.

The article accompanying these photos is a delight too. (Not always the case with such pieces.) Writer Laura Helmuth has a fine touch that works for the science nerd and layreader alike. She writes this about Saturn’s moons:

“Titan, the largest (bigger even than Mercury), has lakes of supercool methane and slushy eruptions of a water-ammonia mix. Enceladus is riddled with geysers so powerful they feed matter into Saturn’s rings. Rhea may have its own rings. Saturn is practically a solar system unto itself.”

If you too once spent many happy hours constructing a shaky model of the solar system involving a lot of toothpicks and ping-pong balls, this is your chance to be transported again.