Solar System

The **Solar System**, also referred to as the **Outer Wilds** comprises almost all of the locations in the game. The player can journey to any of these from their first expedition into space, although understanding the mysteries they hold and unlocking the secrets that lead to the end will take the player on a deep exploration of each location.

At the centre of the solar system is the Sun - a yellow or red dwarf star - orbited by five planets and numerous other astronomical bodies. From the beginning of a cycle, the player has 22 minutes before the Sun goes supernova and destroys the Solar System.

## The Sun

**The Sun** is a main sequence star that lies at the centre of the Solar System and which all other astronomical bodies orbit. As time progresses, the star grows to become a Red Giant (even becoming big enough to overlap The Interloper's orbit, destroying said astral body) before eventually collapsing under its own gravity and exploding in a violent Supernova after 22 minutes.

## Planets

### Hourglass Twins

The **Hourglass Twins** are two planets in a binary orbit with each other. Ash Twin is a seemingly barren sand planet and Ember Twin is a rocky desert planet with an expansive cave system. As the loop progresses, Ash Twin transfers its sand to Ember Twin, causing key locations and ancient Nomai architecture buried in Ash Twin to be revealed, while Ember Twin’s cave network slowly fills with sand and becomes inaccessible.

### Timber Hearth

A lush forest planet and home planet of the Hearthians. It features expansive grass plains and a large network of submerged caverns, with many geysers providing openings. There are also numerous large craters and tall mountains scattered across the surface. Timber Hearth is where the player begins their journey at the beginning of every loop.

### Brittle Hollow

**Brittle Hollow** is a hollow rocky planet with a black hole at the core, with many structures embedded across both the surface and the underside of its fragile crust. As time progresses, bombardment from the planet's moon, Hollow's Lantern, causes large chunks of the planet to break off and fall through the black hole, emerging from the white hole at the system's outskirts.

### Giant’s Deep

**Giant's Deep** is a large aquatic planet with a deep worldwide ocean, strong gravity, swirling cyclones and a strong upwards water current. It has several islands that freely drift across the planet and are occasionally thrown into suborbital trajectories by passing cyclones.

### Dark Bramble

**Dark Bramble** is a frozen malevolent mass of twisted vines, foggy rooms and a confusing portal network that warps conventional spacetime, inhabited by hostile Anglerfish. It was originally an ocean planet before being infected with dark and twisted vines that tore the planet apart.

## Other Astronomical Bodies

### The Attlerock

**The Attlerock** is the lone rocky moon of Timber Hearth. It features a large impact crater on its far side, and acts as a Hearthian outpost from the early days of their space program.

### Hollow’s Lantern

**Hollow’s Lantern** is the lone volcanic moon of Brittle Hollow. Over the course of the loop, the moon shoots meteors of lava from its four volcanoes onto Brittle Hollow, breaking pieces of the planet's crust and slowly depleting the moon's lava ocean as time progresses.

### White Hole

The **White Hole** is a lone gravitational singularity in the outskirts of the Solar System, linked to the black hole in Brittle Hollow's core. Objects sent falling into the planet's black hole exit from the White Hole, with the Nomai White Hole Station positioned nearby.

### The Interloper

**The Interloper** is a mysterious extra-solar comet and the newest addition to the Solar System, covered in a crust of thick ice. It orbits in a highly elliptical orbit with a perihelion lower than the Hourglass Twins' orbit, close enough to temporarily melt its ice crust, and an aphelion further out than the White Hole Station. It can be seen crashing into the sun when the loop nears its end.

### The Quantum Moon

The **Quantum Moon** is a mysterious moon with macroscopic quantum properties, appearing in orbit around different planets and vanishing when unobserved. Unreachable by normal means, landing on the Quantum Moon is a mystery unto itself.

### Eye of the Universe

The **Eye of the Universe** is an extremely old, mysterious planetary object in an apparently distant orbit around the Sun, sought after by the Nomai as their ultimate goal.

## Artificial satellites

### Sun Station

The **Sun Station** is a space station created by the Nomai in a very low heliocentric orbit. The station is tidally locked to the sun and is generally inaccessible by ship travel. As the Sun becomes a red giant, the station is absorbed and destroyed by the growing outer layer.

### Orbital Probe Cannon

**The Orbital Probe Cannon** is an artificial satellite built in orbit around Giant's Deep by the Nomai. At the beginning of every loop it can be seen overhead launching a probe before immediately exploding. The fragments of the Orbital Probe Cannon continue to orbit Giant's Deep for the duration of the loop.

### White Hole Station

The **White Hole Station** is a space station built by the Nomai on the outskirts of the Solar System. It lies beside the white hole that connects to the black hole at the centre of Brittle Hollow, for the purposes of warping back to Brittle Hollow after falling through the black hole.

### Hearthian Satellite

The **Hearthian Satellite** orbits Timber Hearth. Grainy, black-and-white pictures can be taken remotely on Timber Hearth. The satellite can be de-orbited and doing so will grant an achievement.

### Deep Space Satellite

The **Deep Space Satellite** is a Hearthian probe in an extremely high polar orbit around the Sun, among the farthest objects from the Sun in the Solar System. Visible only by a faint flashing red light and connected to Timber Hearth's radio tower, the satellite is used to provide a real-time map of the Solar System for the Hearthians.

### **The Stranger**

**The Stranger** is a giant spaceship built by an unnamed species that came long before the Nomai. It was built to be habitable over a long period of time in interstellar travel and is shaped to simulate gravity by using the centrifugal force in a ring shape. The Stranger uses a cloaking device that makes it almost impossible to be seen from the solar system. It initially has a fixed position and moves away from the sun to avoid the Supernova explosion at the end of the loop.