The Solar System

• Earth
  Earth
  Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
  
  : In the first season, home world of humans has been reduced to a radioactive desert as a result of planet bombardment which began in the 2190s. Humans survive in underground cities, but are threatened as radiation is leaking through the crust. After the Yamato retrieves a radiation-cleanser from the planet Iscandar, Earth is restored to its former glory in the space of two years, but is then threatened with invasion by the Comet Empire, the Black Nebula and other alien races.
  • The Moon
    Moon
    The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
    
    : in the second season, the Moon is devastated by shots fired from the Comet Empire's base, Gatlantis, as a warning to the human race. It is unclear whether the entire Moon is destroyed or merely its surface.

• Venus
  Venus
  Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
  
  : In the second season, Venus is the site of a solar energy collection base used to power Earth. The base is destroyed by the Comet Empire's vanguard force as a prelude to invasion.

• Mars
  Mars
  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
  
  : A planet untouched by the Gamilon threat, Mars is used by the Earth Defence Force as a training ground for cadets, most notably Susumu Kodai and Daisuke Shima. The Yamato also uses it as a destination in the first test of its warp drive, and lands there to conduct repairs on its hull.

• Jupiter
  Jupiter
  Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
  
  : The largest planet of the Solar System, Jupiter traps the Yamato in its gravity, forcing the ship to land on a floating island (the size of Australia
  Australia
  Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
  
  ) in its atmosphere. This island, covered with plant life and housing a Gamilon base, is destroyed in the first test of the wave motion gun, to the regret of the crew.

• Saturn
  Saturn
  Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...
  
  : Many of the battles with the Comet Empire's forces in the second season occur in the vicinity of the ringed planet. Captain Hijikata lures Valsey's fleet into the rings as a trap.
  • Titan
    Titan (moon)
    Titan , or Saturn VI, is the largest moon of Saturn, the only natural satellite known to have a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found....
    
    : Saturn's largest moon is featured in the first season as the only source of a rare but essential metal, cosmonite (titanite in Star Blazers). It also, apparently, contains plant and fungal life frozen in the ice which can be used as food.

• Pluto
  Pluto
  Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...
  
  : The location of the Gamilon frontline base in the Solar System, from which their planet bombs and other attacks are launched. It also possesses seas (most likely of methane
  Methane
  Methane is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is the simplest alkane, the principal component of natural gas, and probably the most abundant organic compound on earth. The relative abundance of methane makes it an attractive fuel...
  
   as liquid water could not exist at such temperatures) and a form of gelatinous life.

• Planet 10
  Kuiper belt
  The Kuiper belt , sometimes called the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt, is a region of the Solar System beyond the planets extending from the orbit of Neptune to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, although it is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive...
  
  : It is believed by scientists in the series that a tenth planet once existed in the Solar System, but was reduced to an asteroid belt in which the Yamato hides from Gamilon pursuit. This asteroid belt resembles to some extent the real-life Kuiper belt
  Kuiper belt
  The Kuiper belt , sometimes called the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt, is a region of the Solar System beyond the planets extending from the orbit of Neptune to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, although it is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive...
  
  . In Star Blazers, the 10th planet was called Miranda (Minerva in the 1979 USA broadcasts).

• Planet 11
  Eris (dwarf planet)
  Eris, formal designation 136199 Eris, is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to orbit the Sun directly...
  
  : An icy body far from the Sun, featured in the second season. It once possessed advanced lifeforms who built structures resembling those of ancient Greece
  Greece
  Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
  
  , and statues reminiscent of Easter Island
  Easter Island
  Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...
  
  . There is an archaeological station there protected by a contingent of space marine
  Space marine
  The space marine, an archetype of science fiction, is a soldier that operates in outer space or on alien worlds. Historical marines fulfill amphibious roles: ship defence, landing parties, and general high-mobility deployments...
  
  s, and the Comet Empire attempt to build a frontline base there. It is called Brumas in Star Blazers.

Our Galaxy

• Alpha Orionis
  Betelgeuse
  Betelgeuse, also known by its Bayer designation Alpha Orionis , is the eighth brightest star in the night sky and second brightest star in the constellation of Orion, outshining its neighbour Rigel only rarely...
  
  (オリオン座アルファ星): a red star in the constellation of Orion
  Orion (constellation)
  Orion, often referred to as The Hunter, is a prominent constellation located on the celestial equator and visible throughout the world. It is one of the most conspicuous, and most recognizable constellations in the night sky...
  
  , which the Yamato passes close to on its journey to Iscandar. The Gamilons have booby-trapped the area with electromagnetic nets (called the Space Net in Star Blazers), missile bases, and caches of an energy-consuming ecto gas.

• The Octopus Protostar
  Protostar
  A protostar is a large mass that forms by contraction out of the gas of a giant molecular cloud in the interstellar medium. The protostellar phase is an early stage in the process of star formation. For a one solar-mass star it lasts about 100,000 years...
  
   Cluster (オクトパス原始星団): (Octopus Channel in Star Blazers) a group of eight proto-planets surrounded by stormy gas clouds, in which a black hole
  Black hole
  A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...
  
   is reputed to be present, making navigation extremely hazardous. However, it is believed there is a safe strait through the centre of the cluster.

• Draco (恐竜惑星): a planet near the edge of our Galaxy, resembling prehistoric Earth. In the second season, Comet Empire General Goland hunts Draco's dinosaur
  Dinosaur
  Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...
  
  -like creatures for recreation, before leaving and ordering his missile fleet to destroy the planet from orbit.

• Telezart (テレザート星): a planet just outside our Galaxy featured in the second season, Telezart was once an interstellar hub, home to many and diverse forms of life from other star systems. However, a devastating world war broke out between the various racial groups, provoking a telepathic woman named Teresa (Trelaina in Star Blazers) to use her immense powers to destroy all life, an act she regrets. In the second season it is the objective of the Yamato to reach Telezart and learn from Teresa of the menace of the Comet Empire. Teresa ultimately uses her psionic powers to self-destruct the planet in an attempt to destroy the White Comet. While the planet's detonation did not destroy the White Comet as Teresa had hoped, it did inflict tremendous damage on the Comet Empire, as well as blowing it far off its intended course toward Earth. This gave the Yamato more than enough time to reach Earth first and warn the Earth Defense Council, allowing them to mount a counter-offense against the White Comet's arrival.

Beyond our Galaxy

• Beemela: a tropical Earth-like planet between our Galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud, its inhabitants are semi-primitive humanoid bee
  Bee
  Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila...
  
  s who kill their criminals and turn them into royal jelly
  Royal jelly
  Royal jelly is a honey bee secretion that is used in the nutrition of larvae, as well as adult queens. It is secreted from the glands in the hypopharynx of worker bees, and fed to all larvae in the colony....
  
   to trade with the Gamilons (though this aspect is not shown in Star Blazers). Like real bees, they have a matriarchical
  Matriarchy
  A matriarchy is a society in which females, especially mothers, have the central roles of political leadership and moral authority. It is also sometimes called a gynocratic or gynocentric society....
  
   society.

• Balan: half-way between our Galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud, Balan is a sunless planet whose plant life lives on geothermal heat. It is also home to the Balanodons, a race of reptiles capable of flying through space in the form of a massive communal organism. The Gamilons have built a refuelling base on Balan as part of their plan to colonise Earth; they have also constructed an artificial sun, which General Domel attempts to use in a plan to destroy the Yamato.

• The Rainbow Star Cluster: a group of seven stars of different colours, surrounded by a black nebula
  Nebula
  A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen gas, helium gas and other ionized gases...
  
   which is possessed of an electromagnetic field which interferes with radar. General Domel (Lysis) chooses the Rainbow Star Cluster as the location for his final battle against the Yamato.

• The Large Magellanic Cloud
  Large Magellanic Cloud
  The Large Magellanic Cloud is a nearby irregular galaxy, and is a satellite of the Milky Way. At a distance of slightly less than 50 kiloparsecs , the LMC is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way, with the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal and Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy lying closer to the center...
  
  : 148,000 light years from Earth, this satellite galaxy of our own (and a part of the Local Group
  Local Group
  The Local Group is the group of galaxies that includes Earth's galaxy, the Milky Way. The group comprises more than 30 galaxies , with its gravitational center located somewhere between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy...
  
  ) is the objective of the Yamato in the first season. It contains two notable planets:
  • Gamilas (ガミラス): aka "Gamilon". One of the two eighth planets of its solar system, Gamilas was once an Earth-like planet but is now, like its twin planet Iscandar, dying. Its outer shell is largely covered by forests; massive holes permit entry into the enormous underground caverns that have formed beneath the crust due to the planet's extreme volcanism
    Volcanism
    Volcanism is the phenomenon connected with volcanoes and volcanic activity. It includes all phenomena resulting from and causing magma within the crust or mantle of a planet to rise through the crust and form volcanic rocks on the surface....
    
    . The floors and ceilings are host to the cities in which the Gamilon people now live; the seas are now underground and have been converted by volcanism into sulfuric acid
    Sulfuric acid
    Sulfuric acid is a strong mineral acid with the molecular formula . Its historical name is oil of vitriol. Pure sulfuric acid is a highly corrosive, colorless, viscous liquid. The salts of sulfuric acid are called sulfates...
    
    . Leader Deslar (Desslok) uses tractor beams to drag the Yamato into the caverns, hoping to destroy it with missiles and the acid sea, but the battle serves only to trigger volcanic eruptions and roof collapse which destroy the cities and most of the Gamilon people. Deslar and the remnants of his people return to Gamilas in Yamato: The New Voyage only to discover the Black Nebula Empire attempting to mine it for a rare element used in their weaponry. The resulting battle causes the planet to explode, sending Iscandar into a space warp.
  • Iscandar (イスカンダル): an Earth-like planet almost entirely covered by seas, Iscandar was once a world of life and technology, but is now a dying world. It is ruled by Queen Starsha, the last survivor of her race, who attempts to maintain peace with her belligerent neighbour, while holding it at bay with the threat of a doomsday bomb capable of destroying the planet. It is the objective of the Yamato in the first season to reach Iscandar and obtain a device called Cosmo-Cleaner-D (Cosmo-DNA in Star Blazers) from Starsha. Iscandar is the only source of a rare element called iscandarium, sought by the Black Nebula Empire, but Starsha destroys her planet rather than allow them to obtain it.

• The White Comet: an enormous plasma field resembling a gigantic comet
  Comet
  A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
  
  , with at its centre Gatlantis, a fortress city situated on a hemispherical moon. The home of the Comet Empire, it travels through space destroying lifeless planets in its path, and sending out fleets of warships to conquer useful life-bearing worlds. Having dominated the Andromeda Galaxy
  Andromeda Galaxy
  The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Andromeda. It is also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, and is often referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older texts. Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy to the...
  
  , it is now en route to our Galaxy, its ultimate target being Earth. Even though the plasma shield can be destroyed, Gatlantis itself is extremely dangerous, a force field protecting the city, a rotating belt of missile launchers at the equator, and energy weapons and fighter hangars in craters in its underside. It is, however, fragile at the very top of its central tower and at the very bottom of the rock hemisphere, and energy is supplied from a single power centre. The White Comet features in the second TV season and the alternate version of the story told in Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato.

• The Black Nebula: featured in the movie Be Forever, Yamato, this is a massive double-galaxy near our own (at a distance of 200,000 light years), composed of clouds of dark matter
  Dark matter
  In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is matter that neither emits nor scatters light or other electromagnetic radiation, and so cannot be directly detected via optical or radio astronomy...
  
   on one side which obscure the spiral galaxy
  Spiral galaxy
  A spiral galaxy is a certain kind of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work The Realm of the Nebulae and, as such, forms part of the Hubble sequence. Spiral galaxies consist of a flat, rotating disk containing stars, gas and dust, and a central concentration of stars known as...
  
   on the other; for this reason it has never been detected before, despite being a part of the Local Group. Passage between the cloud and the galaxy is achieved through a vortex at the centre. Both galaxies are held separate by the system's one significant planet:
  • Dezarium (デザリアム星): home of the Black Nebula Empire, a race of bionic
    Bionics
    Bionics is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology.The word bionic was coined by Jack E...
    
     humanoids. Though disguised to resemble Earth (complete with famous landmarks including the Egyptian Pyramids
    Egyptian pyramids
    The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt.There are 138 pyramids discovered in Egypt as of 2008. Most were built as tombs for the country's Pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found...
    
    ), it is, beneath its shell, a massive spherical skeleton of metal, a crystalline city at its centre whose tower-tops can be used as missiles. The planet can only be destroyed by a strategically fired burst from a wave motion gun, and doing so causes the two galaxies of the Black Nebula to collide, forming a new galaxy.

• Aquarius: featured in the movie Final Yamato, Aquarius is a planet covered by heavy water
  Heavy water
  Heavy water is water highly enriched in the hydrogen isotope deuterium; e.g., heavy water used in CANDU reactors is 99.75% enriched by hydrogen atom-fraction...
  
   which travels throughout our Galaxy on a long orbit at roughly half the speed of light
  Speed of light
  The speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its value is 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact since the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time...
  
  , flooding the worlds it passes and thus bringing either life to lifeless planets (such as the ancient Earth) or death to inhabited worlds (such as Dingir). The only land on its surface is in the form of floating continents which once supported intelligent humanoid life, but its population is now extinct. It also possesses three non-aligned planetary ring
  Planetary ring
  A planetary ring is a ring of cosmic dust and other small particles orbiting around a planet in a flat disc-shaped region.The most notable planetary rings known in Earth's solar system are those around Saturn, but the other three gas giants of the solar system possess ring systems of their...
  
  s of ice crystals.

• Dingir: the home of a grey-skinned race of technologically advanced humanoids. They are descended from Earth humans who were transported there by aliens (whom they regard as gods) 10,000 years ago when Aquarius last flooded Earth. In the movie Final Yamato, Dingir is flooded by Aquarius and its population all but wiped out; the surviving Dingirians set their sights on Earth as a new home and plan to transport Aquarius there in order to destroy humanity. The planet was named for the Sumerian
  Sumerian language
  Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...
  
   word for "god", dingir
  Dingir
  Dingir is a cuneiform sign, most commonly the determinative for "deity" although it has related meanings as well. As a determinative, it is not pronounced, and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript "D" as in e.g. DInanna...
  
  .
  • Uruk: an enormous space fortress built into a Dingirian continent which rises from the drowned world, Uruk represents the last survivors of the Dingirians. It possesses a warp drive capable of transporting the planet Aquarius through space, and its main defenses are based on neutrino
    Neutrino
    A neutrino is an electrically neutral, weakly interacting elementary subatomic particle with a half-integer spin, chirality and a disputed but small non-zero mass. It is able to pass through ordinary matter almost unaffected...
    
    s, in the form of both shields and deadly beams. It also carries fleets of warships and fighters, and is controlled from a central temple. It is named after the ancient Sumer
    Sumer
    Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
    
    ian city of Uruk
    Uruk
    Uruk was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Uruk gave its name to the Uruk...
    
    .