The Scale of the Solar System

Phil Plait:

I’m sometimes asked what’s the one thing I wish people would understand better about the Universe. My answer is always the same: scale. We humans have a miserable sense of just how big space is, and I’ve spent a lot of time over the years working out ways to express it better.

His latest goes like this: If the Earth were the size of a basketball, then the moon would be about the size of a tennis ball. The distance between them would be 24 feet (7.4 meters).

At this scale, the Sun would be the size of small office building, 85 feet (26 meters) in diameter. The distance between the Earth and the Sun would be 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers).