and especially the distances to the neighbouring stars.

Our brains are quite good at dealing with medium-sized

objects and distances like buildings, city blocks and

even entire cities, but when someone says that Pluto

is 7.3 BILLION kilometers away, what does that really look like?

In order to get a sense of the immense scale of our

solar system and the distances between the planets,

let’s build a scale model in a city so we have some

common reference points for judging the relative distances.

We’ll start in an American football field with the sun

placed at the 50 yard line and scaled to the size of a 44cm beach ball.

At this scale, Earth and Venus are the size of a small

stud earring, only 4mm in diameter. Jupiter is about

the size of a golf ball, Uranus and Neptune are the

size of a small marble, and our moon and Pluto are

closer to the size of a round candy sprinkle,

only 1mm in diameter.

Now let’s put them in their proper locations based on

their aphelions, or their farthest distances from the sun.

We’ll find Mercury near the 26 yard line or 22 meters

from the sun. That’s equal to about 70 million kilometers at actual scale.

Venus will be near the 12 yard line,

34 meters from the sun.

Earth can be found inside the end zone at 48 meters

from our beach ball sun.

And our little candy sprinkle-sized Moon is about 13cm

from the earring-sized Earth.

To find Mars, we’ll have to get up to the middle of

the lower seating section, about 80m from the sun.

At this scale, Mars is about 2mm in diameter, as you

can see compared to this bottle cap.

After Mars, the distances start to increase rapidly.

To get to Jupiter, we’ll have to head out 260m or 850ft,

which is halfway into the parking lot.

Saturn will take us all the way through the parking

lot and to the edge of the first block of the city,

or 480m from the sun.

Uranus is over 5 city blocks past the parking lot.

That’s 950 meters from the centre of the stadium.

Our small marble-sized Neptune takes us right to the

edge of our model city, almost 10 blocks from the

parking lot and 1.43km, or 0.89 miles from the sun.

Now we’ll make our way to little dwarf planet Pluto,

nearly 10 football fields past Neptune.

Fun fact: In this part of the animation, we’re

currently travelling at a scale speed of nearly 600 times the speed of light!

Pluto, here less than 1mm in diameter, is well beyond

the city and across the bridge at over 2.3 km, or 1.4 miles from the centre of the stadium.

That’s what 7.3 billion km looks like when our entire planet is scaled down to a mere 4mm.

Now how far away do you think the nearest STAR would

be at this scale?

If our beach ball sun was in Yankee Stadium in New

York City, our entire solar system would be contained

within a 2 to 3 km radius between Harlem and the Bronx.

At this scale, here is where Proxima Centauri, the

nearest star to our sun, would be found.

Not yet

Even farther!

The nearest star would be past Mumbai India at about

12,690 km away!

If we ever want to explore the neighbouring star

systems, I think we’re going to need some faster ships!

Now that you’ve got a sense for the scale of our solar

system, why not check out our video about the Hubble Deep

Field Images and the size of the Universe by clicking

here or in the description below.

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Thanks so much for watching. See you next time!