A guided 3D journey from a cold cloud of hydrogen and helium to today's Solar System — watch gravity collapse the cloud into a spinning protoplanetary disk, the proto-Sun ignite nuclear fusion, and Earth become a living planet with seasons and a Moon.
It began as a cold cloud of mostly hydrogen and helium. Gravity pulled the cloud together, and because it was slowly rotating, conservation of angular momentum spun it into a flat protoplanetary disk around a growing proto-Sun. Dust in the disk stuck together into planetesimals and then planets, all orbiting the same way, while the young Sun's wind blew the leftover gas away.
Because of the frost line — the distance from the Sun beyond which it is cold enough for water and other gases to freeze into ice. Inside the frost line only rock and metal could condense, making small rocky planets; outside it, icy solids were abundant, so the growing planets pulled in huge envelopes of gas and became giants.
Seasons come from Earth's 23.4° axial tilt, not from its distance to the Sun. As Earth orbits, the tilt makes each hemisphere lean toward the Sun for part of the year and away for the rest. That is why the northern and southern hemispheres have opposite seasons at the same time — and Earth is actually closest to the Sun in January.
Earth orbits in the habitable zone — also called the Goldilocks zone — where liquid water can exist. Its atmosphere keeps the surface warm through the greenhouse effect, lifting it from about −18 °C (255 K) to a liveable +15 °C (288 K), while its magnetic field deflects the solar wind and the ozone layer blocks harmful UV. Distance alone is not enough, though: Venus sits near the zone, but a runaway greenhouse makes it scorching.
A new Moon could give a solar eclipse and a full Moon a lunar eclipse, but the Moon's orbit is tilted about 5° to Earth's orbit around the Sun. Most months the Moon passes a little above or below the Sun–Earth line, so its shadow misses. An eclipse only happens when a new or full Moon falls near one of the two points where the orbits cross.