SCALED SOLAR SYSTEM

Rosemary Kennett, Jeffrey Russell and Janet Stooks

The scale of our Solar System is often difficult to comprehend. 2 of my astronomy students have come up with imaginative ways to show its scale. Janet Stooks envisioned it using her driveway. 2 photographs show it imaged from the Sun and from Pluto. Jeff Russell puts the solar system in perspective for Central New Yorkers by scaling the Solar System down so that the Sun is represented by the Carrier Dome and the rest of the planets follow accordingly.

Lets first look at the sizes of the planets. The diameter of the Carrier Dome is 160 m (0.16 km) and the diameter of the Sun is 1.4 million km. Hence the scale for this model is 160:1,400,000 or about 1:9,000,000.

So we can find the ratio of the planet's size to the Sun's size and multiply this by 160 to produce its scaled size in m. The following items are listed for the sizes of the planets:

Actual size of planet (diameter in thousands of kilometers)
Size of planet/size of Sun
Scaled size of planet (diameter in meters)

PLANET	DIAMETER		SCALED DIAMETER
	(thousand km)	(solar diameters)	(m)
Sun	1400	1	160
Mercury	4.9	0.0035	0.57
Venus	12.1	0.0086	1.4
Earth	12.7	0.0091	1.5
Mars	6.8	0.0048	0.78
Jupiter	140	0.10	16
Saturn	120	0.086	14
Uranus	51	0.036	5.8
Neptune	49	0.035	5.6
Pluto	2.3	0.0016	0.26

Now we will look at the distances of the planets from the Sun We list the distances in million km. These distances must be divided by 9 million to give the scaled distance. For instance, Mercury's distance is 58 million km, which divided by 9 million gives 6.6 km.

Since we are used to measuring distances in miles, this distance is then divided by 1.6 to produce the scaled distance in miles. The following items are listed for the distances to the planets

Actual distance from Sun (millions of kilometers)
Scaled distance from Dome in kilometers
Scaled distance from Dome in miles

PLANET	DISTANCE FROM SUN	SCALED DISTANCE
	(million km)	(km)	(mile)
Mercury	58	6.6	4.1
Venus	110	12	7.7
Earth	150	17	11
Mars	230	26	16
Jupiter	780	89	56
Saturn	1400	160	100
Uranus	2900	330	210
Neptune	4500	510	320
Pluto	5900	670	420

So what is where? If the Sun is represented by the Carrier Dome:

Mercury is a beachball in Nedrow

What and where is Venus?

Earth is a child cartwheeling in Lafayette

Mars is an umbrella in Tully.
Mars has 2 moons, Phobos and Deimos. What and where are these in our scale model?

Jupiter is the Herkimer Home.

What and where are Saturn, Uranus and Neptune?

Pluto is what in Virginia Beach? Pluto has a companion Charon which is 1270 km in diameter and 19,600 km away. What and where is Charon in this scale model?

To visit a local scale model of a solar system, go to Ithaca.