These tables give some idea of the approximate scale of the solar system, and puts into perspective its distance from some much more distant objects.
Solar System -
Introduction
Object |
Scale Diameter in inches |
Scale Radius of Orbit |
| Sun | 110.00 | |
| Mercury | 0.38 | 380 feet |
| Venus | 0.95 | 710 feet |
| Earth Moon |
1.00 0.27 |
980 feet 30 inches from Earth |
| Mars | 0.53 | 1,493 feet |
| Asteroid Belt | N/A | 1,800 to 3,300 feet |
| Jupiter | 11.21 | 0.97 miles |
| Saturn | 9.45 | 1.78 miles |
| Uranus | 4.00 | 3.57 miles |
| Neptune | 3.88 | 5.59 miles |
| Kuiper Belt Objects: Pluto SDOs & DOs Oort Cloud |
0.18 | 5.50 to 9.15 miles c. 6 to >40 miles c. 370 to >10,000 miles |
Scale: 1:500,000,000
| Object | Scale Distance |
| Diameter of the Sun | A grain of sand, about 0.009 inches across |
| Earth | < 1/10,000th inch across, < one inch from the Sun |
| Nearest Star (Proxima Centauri) | 4.24 Miles from Earth |
| Diameter of Milky Way | c. 100,000 Miles |
| Andromeda Galaxy | c. 2.5 Million Miles from Earth |
| Lynx Arc Supercluster | c. 40 Billion miles from Earth (comoving distance on this scale) |
Scale: 1:6,000,000,000,000
This scale is approximately 1 mile to 1 light-year. In the model below, I have rescaled the Sun to be the size of a grain of sand; a little under one hundredth of an inch across. The Earth would be about the size of a bacterium! In the real Universe, the Andromeda Galaxy, for example, is actually about 778 Kpc away. That's over 15,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away; and Andromeda is our nearest large galaxy!
One last statistic. If we scaled our entire solar system, out to the Kuiper Belt, to the size of a grain of sand. The Lynx Arc Supercluster would still be nearly 110,000 miles away, and the comoving diameter of the observable Universe, to the same scale, would be represented by a sphere about 250,000 miles in diameter (in reality, it is about 28 Gpc or 93 Billion Light-Years in diameter)!
Models
The model below scales the Sun as a globe 110 inches in diameter, with the Earth at one inch in diameter. All the other distances are to this same scale. Orbital radii are based on the semi-major axis except for Pluto, as its orbit is extremely eccentric.