
Planets are mostly spherical masses of rock, minerals and sometimes gas, and one of the most common structures in the universe. All known bioforms originated on planets, including solspawn which saw their origins on the planet Earth. Likewise, the Nymbrae, a stone age xenobioid species, originated and still exist exclusively on Greengarden. Planets are incredibly diverse, varying immensely in orbit, temperature, atmospheric composition, mass and much more.
The Milky Way galaxy contains approximately 800 billion planets, though just a fraction (around 10 billion or so) of them actually have significant populations of solspawn, as civilization's expansion and development continues.
Planets also often have their own systems consisting of moons, artificial satellites, megastructures and, on occasion, rings, allowing their potential populations to be much higher than that which could fit on their surfaces. Rocky planets usually have none, or just a few moons, while gas giants generally have a number of moons at least in the tens and commonly over one hundred. Despite the seemingly vast scale of planetary systems, over 97% of solspawn live on artificial megastructures rather than on moons or planets simply due to their sheer scale. Nevertheless, planets have still had a major part to play in history as without them, life as it is known would not exist.