PV Gap

Susan Said:

looking for the solar system scale?

We Answered:

I like this one,
http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_…

Nathaniel Said:

What is a scale measurement of our solar system?

We Answered:

This is never simple, the inner planets stand very close to the sun, the outer planets stand very far from the sun. There are a lot of nature parcs where a solar system is showed, with statues for the planets, on the right scale of distance. Always the 4 inner planets stand only a few meters from each other, while you need to find the planet Neptune on the outer boundary of the parc, almost more than a mile away.

Delores Said:

What scale do you use for a model of the solar system?

We Answered:

The problem here is that the sizes of the planets are incredibly small in relation to the distances between them. As a result it is impossible to show both size and distance on the same sheet, unless it was absolutely huge.

To show the distances, let's assume that the sun is at the bottom left of your A3 sheet, and you're just going out at far as Neptune, the furthest of the 8 main planets, towards the opposite corner of the sheet. This gives you a distance of 50 cm.

The distances in cm from the position of the sun would be as follows:

Mercury 0.64
Venus 1.20
Earth 1.66
Mars 2.53
Jupiter 8.65
Saturn 15.85
Uranus 31.89
Neptune 49.97

This scale works out at 9,000,000,000,000 to 1.

On this scale, Jupiter, which is 10 times the width of the Earth, would only be 0.0016 cm, or 0.16 mm wide! Far too small to be seen, which explains why you can't show the planets to scale by size as well.