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Imagine That !
© 2002 www.pixelparadox.com

Can you draw a picture of our solar system?  Most people can sketch the Sun and a few planets without much effort.  Surely an astronomer could produce a much better, highly accurate, picture.

Here's something that might surprise you as much as it did me:

You have probably never seen an accurate picture of our solar system - and that includes pictures in books, movies, and even presentations at planetariums.

Typically, what we see is similar to this drawing by NASA. NO, it's not a media conspiracy to misinform you!  However, you're not getting the whole picture, simply because it can't physically be done.  It's an issue with the scale of things. But before I talk about that, here's some boring stuff:

The diameter of a planet (or Sun) is the distance from one side, through the middle, to the other side.

The Sun's diameter is about 865,400 miles (1,392,429 kilometers). The diameters of the planets are approximately as follows:

The planets are roughly the following distances from the Sun:

Hopefully, this is the end of the boring stuff.

The information above is factual and dry.  You can't easily imagine a picture of the solar system based on these figures, unless you're a scientist or mathematician.

What you need is a "scale model".  This means a miniature model of the real thing.  Model car builders are quite familiar with scale models.  The models they build are a fraction of the size of the real car, but in shape and surface details they are quite faithful to the bigger original.

If we talk about a scale model of the solar system, you will soon realize why you have never seen an accurate picture or scale model of the solar system in a book.

However, by calling to mind a few common items, and using some rough estimations, you can construct a pretty accurate scale model of the solar system in your mind.  Then, the real meanining of the numbers in the "distances" table above becomes surprisingly clear.

So, to start:

1)  Imagine that the Sun has shrunk down to the size of a Spanish musket ball from the 15th century.  Wait a minute, that's not too common.  Let's make it a yellow tennis ball instead.  It's about 3 inches (7.5 centimeters) in diameter.  Of course, the rest of the solar system has shrunk in the same proportion as the Sun.

2)  Imagine that the tennis ball Sun is resting in your hand.

If necessary, also imagine that you don't feel its surface temperature of 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit (6,000 degrees Centigrade)!

3)  Now let's get the planets into the model:

See this green dot   .   ?  Mercury is one third as big as the dot.  Mercury is also 10 feet (3 meters) away from the Sun, on your right.

The direction doesn't really matter.  Sometimes the planets roughly line up, and at other times they are scattered in their orbits around the Sun. For this exercise, let's line them all up on the right.

O.K. See Mercury out there 10 feet away from your tennis ball Sun?

Venus is half-a-dot in size, and is 19 feet (5.7 meters) away.  Earth is also half-a-dot big, and 27 feet (8.1 meters) away.  Mars, coming in at slightly larger than one third-of-a-dot, is 41 feet (12.3 meters) away.  Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are called the "inner" planets.  So, there they are, all within 41 feet of our tennis ball Sun.  It would take a very big piece of paper to draw a picture of the solar system so far.

Now lets think about the "outer" planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

Jupiter is the size of a green pea   .   It's hanging out there about 140 feet (42 meters) from the tennis ball Sun. Saturn is slightly smaller than Jupiter, and 256 feet (76.8 meters) away.  This is almost the length of an American football field.

Uranus is the size of a BB shot   (or that colored plastic ball on the head of a map pin).  It's way out there at 515 feet (154.5 meters). Neptune is also the size of a BB, and is 807 feet (242.1 meters) away - a bit more than two and a half football fields.

The last known planet, Pluto, is about one fifth as big as the green dot
(here's that dot again   .   ).  However, it makes up for it's minuscule size by being a whopping 1,059 feet (317.7 meters) from our tennis ball Sun - three and a half football fields!

So, the next time you see a picture in a book of the Sun, with all the planets circling around it, you'll know better.

If you found this exercise enlightening, here's one more tidbit :

If the Sun is the size of a tennis ball, then the nearest star to us, Alpha Centauri, is about 900 miles (1,448 kilometers) away.

Imagine that !

This article may be freely distributed and reprinted as long as the above copyright remains present.
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