The Solar System In Scale, Part 2 -
The Outer Planets
A Realm Of Giants
Even though Jupiter is the first of the Gas Giants, I chose to use it instead as a boundary marker. It should be listed here, with the other Gas Giants. A quick look at the map tells us, though, that this is truly deep space. The inner most circle is the orbit of Jupiter. We've had to decrease our scale four fold. On this map, the Terrestrial planets would be crowded in to an area 1/3 the diameter of Jupiter's orbit. Rather than try and illustrate that, we'll just move right on out to planet number six.
(image edited from "Google Maps" )
The second gas giant, and the first one on this page, is my favorite, Saturn.
Known namely for its vast ring system, Saturn lies 477 feet (145.4 meters) from our styrofoam Sun, a distance of 9.54 AU. Like Jupiter, it dwarfs the Terrestrial planets, .4684 inches (11.8 mm) in diameter.
From this point on, the distances get huge. We now come across the an odd planet that is basically lying on its side, the planet Uranus.
We are now 959 feet (292.3 meters) from the Sun, 19.19 AU. It is .1888 inches (4.7 mm) in diameter, roughly four times the size of our planet Earth. With Uranus, the last of the planets that are easily seen from Earth with a small telescope have passed. There is one Gas Giant left.
The next world is essentially Uranus' twin in size, and almost the same color, but more upright; the planet Neptune.
Until the 20th century, Neptune marked the end of our known Solar System. It is a distant 1503 feet (458 meters), 30.06 AU, from the Sun. It is very close to Uranus in size; .1827 inches (4.6 mm), but a darker blue in color. For many people, Neptune marks the end of the true planets.
Now we approach an object that is controversial. For some, it (and all of it's similar siblings) are not true planets at all. For this model, though, it is the last object visited. It is Pluto.
We are a staggering 1950 feet (594 meters, over half a kilometer) from our Sun. Pluto is tiny, smaller than many of the moons of the Gas Giants. In our scale, it is .009 inches (.2 mm) in diameter. It is exaggerated so that it can be seen. Its largest moon Charon, while perhaps half the size of Pluto, is simply too small to highlight (let alone its other tiny moons Hydra and Nix).
To put this all in perspective, we need to look back and find our center. Unfortunately, our styrofoam Sun doesn't glow, so we have to point it out.
We are 39 AU from the Sun. Pluto's orbit is highly elliptical, so we're using the average distance here. In reality, Pluto's average distance from the Sun is estimated to be around 3,669,000,000 miles (5,940,000,000 km). And there are still thousands of objects out there, far beyond the orbit of Pluto, orbiting in the cold, vast space the stretches out to perhaps half a light year in distance. On this model, you get a small taste of just how vast space is. And we orbit just one of perhaps 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, itself a lone island of stars, one of billions, spinning in the vast cosmos.
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