What I learned at the planetarium (and after) Mar 2022

realative size of planets

To build a scale model of the solar system outdoors:
  • Use a basketball for the sun (9.5″ diameter)
  • Sun: place the basketball on the ground
  • Earth: 86′ away from the sun is the earth at ~1/11 inch diameter
    29 yard line
    about half the diameter of a BB
    paint it blue and green with tiny white icecaps
  • Mars: 131′ away from the sun at ~1/20 inch diameter
    44 yard line
    even smaller than Earth
    paint it a rusty color
  • Jupiter: 447′ away from the sun at about 1 inch diameter
    1.5 football fields
    paint it striped orange yellow (maybe use a big marble)
  • Saturn: 821′ away from the sun at about 5/6 inch diameter
    2.75 football fields
    paint it hazy yellow-brown
  • Uranus: 0.31 miles away from the sun at about 1/3 inch diameter
    5.5 football fields
    paint it beautiful blue-green
  • Neptune: 0.49 miles away from the sun at about 1/3 inch diameter
    8.6 football fields
    paint it blue
  • Pluto: 0.64 miles away from the sun at about 1/50 inch diameter
    11.3 football fields
    paint it very light brown
    dwarf planet

In the solar system, most bodies are relatively small and relatively far away.

The sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass of the entire solar system.

My Drawing

My Calculations

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