Imagining Our Universe
How large is our solar system?
Imagine the Earth as the size of a baseball park. The nearest object to the Earth, the Moon, would be approximately 7 ½ miles away. Venus on the other hand, the Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor, would be about 900 miles away in one direction, while Mars, our next closest neighbor, would be about 1,700 miles in the other direction.
Even using these "small" dimensions, Jupiter is approximately 12,600 miles away from Earth, while Saturn is about 24,000 miles away. Do you get the picture that our own Solar System is REALLY BIG!
Now, let’s shrink our Solar System down even more. What if the Earth was the size of a baseball at home plate in our baseball park. The Moon, which is the size of a cherry, would be about 7 ½ feet from the Earth. All the other planets would be outside of the park. Venus (which is also baseball sized) is about ½ mile from Earth, the Sun (27 feet across) about ¾ a mile from Earth, Mars (the size of a golf ball) almost 1 ½ miles at its outer orbit (1/3 a mile at its closest orbit), Jupiter (32 inches across) is about 3 ¼ miles away, while Saturn (28 inches across) is approximately 5 ¾ miles away from Earth. Uranus is over 8 miles away, Neptune is 11 1/3 miles, and Pluto is 14 ¼ miles.
Now, how do we shrink our Solar System into the parameters of our baseball park? If Earth was a grain of sand, Mercury, Mars and Pluto would be the size of dust specks, the Sun is the size of a golf ball, Saturn and Jupiter are the size of a apple seeds, while Uranus and Neptune are the size of pinheads. At this size, the Sun would be 10 feet behind out home plate, Jupiter would be ¾ths of the way to the pitcher’s mound, Saturn would be almost to 1st base, and Pluto almost to the center field wall.
If the Earth were a grain of sand, the nearest star, Proxima Centauri would be approximately 350 miles away, and Alpha Centauri would be about 375 miles away. Within 1,500 miles of Earth, there would be only a dozen stars.
Shrinking Our "Milky Way" Galaxy
Now let's make our Sun the size of a grain of sand. All of the nine planets of our solar system would be within a 6-foot circle around that grain of sand. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, would be about 5 miles away. Although hundreds of millions of stars would be within a few thousand miles of the Sun, the majority of the Milky Way galaxy would stretch away from that grain of sand for 100s of 1,000s of miles into space.
Now, if our Solar System were a grain of sand, then the Milky Way galaxy would be approximately 13 to 18 miles across, and our nearest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, would be 300 miles away. Billions of stars and galaxies would still be millions of miles away.
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