The Strangest Worlds In Our Solar System Explained

It is the only planet in the solar system that orbits the Sun tipped completely onto its side. Its axis is tilted about 98 degrees, which means that instead of spinning upright like a top the way the other planets do, it rolls around its orbit like a ball. A planet lying on its side, with its poles where its equator should be. This single fact reshapes everything about the world. Because the axis points almost directly at the Sun for part of the orbit, each pole spends decades in continuous sunlight, then decades in total darkness. A single season here lasts about 21 years, and a full orbit takes 84. For a span longer than most human lifetimes, one half of the planet sees no sunrise at all.