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 cms |
Scale Radius of Orbit |
| Sun | 300 | |
| Mercury | 1.00 | 116 meters |
| Venus | 2.50 | 216 meters |
| Earth Moon |
2.7 0.70 |
300 meters 76 cms from Earth |
| Mars | 1.35 | 455 meters |
| Asteroid Belt | N/A | c. 550 to 1,000 meters |
| Jupiter | 28.50 | 1.56 km |
| Saturn | 24.00 | 2.86 km |
| Uranus | 10.16 | 5.74 km |
| Neptune | 9.86 | 9.00 km |
| Kuiper Belt Objects: Pluto SDOs & DOs Oort Cloud |
0.46 | 8.85 to 14.70 km c. 10 to >64 km c. 600to >16,000 km |
Scale: 1:500,000,000
The model below scales the Sun as a globe 300 cms in diameter, with the Earth at 2.7 cms 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.
| Object | Scale Distance |
| Diameter of the Sun | A grain of sand, less than 0.25 mm across |
| Earth | < 1/400th mm across, < 2.5 cms from the Sun |
| Nearest Star (Proxima Centauri) | 6.8 km from Earth |
| Diameter of Milky Way | c. 160,000 Km |
| Andromeda Galaxy | c. 4 Million Km from Earth |
| Lynx Arc Supercluster | c. 64 Billion km from Earth (comoving distance on this scale) |
Scale: 1:6,000,000,000,000
This scale is approximately 1.6 km 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 a quarter of a mm 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 24,000,000,000,000,000,000 kms 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 180,000 km away, and the comoving diameter of the observable Universe, to the same scale, would be represented by a sphere about 400,000 km in diameter (in reality, it is about 28 Gpc or 93 Billion Light-Years in diameter)!