We often see pictures of our solar system like this one from Nasa
We all know it's not really to scale, but it's hard to fully understand the comparative sizes and distances... so to help, let's imagine a scale where the Sun is the size of a basketball (about 9.5 inches in diameter or 24 cm), we can calculate how the planets would scale down in both size and distance from the Sun.
Here’s a breakdown:
Scale:
Sun: Basketball (24 cm in diameter)
Planetary Sizes and Distances (on this scale)
Mercury
Size: A grain of sand (~0.08 cm in diameter)
Distance: 10 meters (33 feet) from the basketball
Venus
Size: A small peppercorn (~0.2 cm in diameter)
Distance: 18 meters (60 feet) from the basketball
Earth
Size: A slightly larger peppercorn (~0.22 cm in diameter)
Distance: 25 meters (82 feet) from the basketball
Mars
Size: A pinhead (~0.12 cm in diameter)
Distance: 38 meters (125 feet) from the basketball
Jupiter
Size: A large gumball (~2.5 cm in diameter)
Distance: 130 meters (426 feet) from the basketball
Saturn
Size: A small marble (~2 cm in diameter)
Distance: 240 meters (787 feet) from the basketball
Uranus
Size: A smaller marble (~0.8 cm in diameter)
Distance: 480 meters (1,575 feet) from the basketball
Neptune
Size: Another small marble (~0.78 cm in diameter)
Distance: 750 meters (2,460 feet) from the basketball
Pluto (dwarf planet)
Size: A speck of dust (~0.04 cm in diameter)
Distance: 1 km (0.62 miles) from the basketball
In this scale:
Sun is the size of a basketball
Earth would be a peppercorn 25 meters (82 feet) from the basketball-sized Sun.
Jupiter, the largest planet, would be a gumball about 130 meters (426 feet) away.
Pluto would be a tiny speck nearly a kilometer from the Sun.
This perspective really highlights just how vast our solar system is! Even when scaled down to the size of everyday objects, the distances between the planets are immense.
If we then took this further, and said, how far away is our nearest neighbor solar sytem?
On the scale where the Sun is the size of a basketball (24 cm in diameter), the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, is 4.37 light years away. To find how far it would be on this basketball scale, we’ll scale down the astronomical distance.
Conversion:
1 light year is about 9.461 trillion kilometers. Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light years away, which translates to roughly 41.3 trillion kilometers.
We can now use the same scale as we used for the planets, where:
The real Sun to real Earth distance is 150 million km.
In our basketball scale, this distance is 25 meters (82 feet).
Scale Calculation:
So, if 150 million km equals 25 meters, then:
41.3 trillion km150 million km×25 meters=approximately 6,880 km.\frac{41.3 \text{ trillion km}}{150 \text{ million km}} \times 25 \text{ meters} = \text{approximately 6,880 km}.150 million km41.3 trillion km×25 meters=approximately 6,880 km.
Answer:
On this scale where the sun is the size of a basketball, the nearest solar system, Alpha Centauri, would be about 6,880 kilometers (4,276 miles) away from your basketball-sized Sun!
To give some perspective, that’s roughly the distance from New York City to Tokyo, or Los Angeles to Paris!
Even on a reduced scale like this, the nearest star system is incredibly far away.
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