If you were anything like me, when I was a kid we all had to do models of the solar system. I remember being drilled on the names of planets (bad luck Pluto!) and their basic forms.
BUT
I never had any clue (not one!) about the true scale of the solar system. You see all the pictures I cut up and stuck on stuff when I was a kid looked like this:
I love this video - some guys set out to show the true size of the solar system in the middle of the desert:
This is a great visualisation through scrolling:
How big is the Sun?
BUT
I never had any clue (not one!) about the true scale of the solar system. You see all the pictures I cut up and stuck on stuff when I was a kid looked like this:
Aaaaaaaand that is COMPLETELY WRONG! Looks nice but the scale is very very very wrong. Now I guess it is hard to draw the solar system to scale, but it would have been nice to have some idea. Perhaps my teachers at school did tell me, but with no tech available (perhaps we had a filmstrip somewhere out the back - showing my age here!) it was hard to give us a good visual reference.
So here are a few cool things that give us a much better picture of the scale involved...
I love these zoom things - from the tiniest of tiny to the vastness of the galaxy:
I love these zoom things - from the tiniest of tiny to the vastness of the galaxy:
I love this video - some guys set out to show the true size of the solar system in the middle of the desert:
This is a great visualisation through scrolling:
How big is the Sun?