A scale model of the Solar System
Here’s one way to try to get a handle on just how immense our little corner of the cosmos really is, as described by Prof. Jay M. Pasachoff of Williams College-Hopkins Observatory in Williamstown, Mass. in his book Astronomy: From the Earth to the Universe (Saunders College Publishing 1983). I've paraphrased a bit:
Imagine the Solar System is scaled down and placed on a map of the United States. The Sun is a hot ball of gas taking up all of Rockefeller Center, a kilometer wide, in the heart of Manhattan in New York City. Mercury, then, is a sphere four meters wide in mid-Long Island. Venus is a ball ten meters around, about one and a half times farther away. The Earth is only slightly bigger, located near Trenton, N.J., while Mars is half that size, five meters wide, located past Philadelphia, Pa.
Jupiter, the next planet out from the Sun, is a hundred meters across (about the size of a baseball stadium), past Pittsburgh on the Ohio border. Saturn, with its rings, is a little larger than Jupiter, and is beyond Cincinnati, toward the Indiana state line. Uranus and Neptune are each about thirty meters across, about the size of a baseball infield, and are near Topeka, Kans. and Santa Fe, N.M., respectively. Pluto, about the size of Mercury, is near Los Angeles, forty times the distance of the Earth from the Sun.
And occasionally, a comet sweeps in from Alaska....
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Originally posted by Claptree
