Scaling the Solar System
Do you ever wonder just how big the sun really is in comparison to the Earth or exactly how far away is Jupiter? To get a feel for this, try using the following "rough" scale where the sun is a 2 foot beach ball. I will do this in metric soon I promise.
By the way, this scale is roughly .000000044% of real size and distance.
|
Solar System object |
Scale (diameter) in inches |
Household object |
Distance from sun |
|
Sun |
24" |
Beach ball |
|
|
Mercury |
1/16" |
Head of a pin |
83 feet |
|
Venus |
3/16" |
Popcorn kernel |
155 feet |
|
Earth |
1/4" |
Loose-leaf paper hole |
215 |
|
Mars |
1/8" |
A pea |
328 |
|
Jupiter |
2.5" |
Tennis ball |
1118 feet (.2 miles) |
|
Saturn |
2" |
Racquetball |
2050 feet (.4 miles) |
|
Uranus |
7/8" |
Coin (Canadian nickel ) |
4122 feet (.8 miles) |
|
Neptune |
7/8" |
Coin (Canadian nickel ) |
6461 feet (1.2 miles) |
|
Pluto |
1/32" |
Dot with a sharp pencil |
8496 feet (1.6 miles) |
As you can see, even if we scale things down to where Pluto is the dot of a sharp pencil, it is still a long long way from the beach ball. In this scale, the first 4 planets are within a football field from the sun. The next closest planet Jupiter is almost 3 football fields away. I hope this is useful for you to understanding size and distance.
Here's something to consider. The suns diameter is so big that you to could go from here to the moon 3 1/2 times to cross it. That's pretty big but our Sun is not really a big star compared to some others. For example, there is a star called Arcturus. It is much bigger than the sun. In our sun section we tell you how many Earths can fit in our sun. Believe it or not, you can fit billions of Earths into Arcturus. It's diameter is about 24 times that of our sun. And while Arcturus is a very large star, it is by no means the largest. Arcturus is about 34 light years away from Earth and is the 4th brightest star in the night sky.
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