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Irish Solar System
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25-06-2011 9:41pm#1My nephew asked me earlier...."How big is the Solar system?". We had some fun making out the scale size of it. It's sometimes hard to grasp the sheer vastness of space and the tiny size of our little blue planet in the cosmos. So imagine that we are taking a journey across the Solar System from the Sun to Neptune and beyond....now imagine that journey is like going from Dublin to Galway.
We start at O'Connell Bridge in Dublin. At this scale the Sun is a large sphere measuring a whopping 57.7 metres in diameter (for comparison Liberty Hall is 59.4 metres tall).
We travel down the quays 2.4km before we come to the first planet in the Solar System: Mercury, just outside Heuston Station. Here Mercury is a small sphere measuring just 20cm in diameter which is somewhat smaller than a football.
A further 2km along the road we come to Venus. Here Venus is a sphere measuring around the size of a small beachball at 50cm in diameter.
Next up is home, Earth. Here Earth is slightly larger than Venus coming in at just shy of 53cm in diameter. The Moon, measuring 14cm in diameter, orbits Earth 16 metres away.
Finally, to wrap up the inner planets, we come to Mars which is nearly 3.5km further out the road just at the exit for the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre! Here Mars measures 28 cm in diameter, the same size as a regular football.
Next we come to Ceres, the first of the dwarf planets. Located nearly 8km from Mars just outside Leixlip, here Ceres is little bigger than a golf ball.
Now things get BIG! A full 15.5km from Ceres is Jupiter just next to the M4 toll plaza. Coming in at nearly 5.9 metres in diameter Jupiter is nearly as big as a house at this scale.
We have to travel nearly another 27km before we reach Saturn near Kinnegad, coming in somewhat smaller than Jupiter at 4.8m in diameter.
Now we have to travel nearly 59km(!) before we reach the next planet, Uranus on the Galway side of Athlone. Here Uranus is a sphere measuring around 1.9 metres in diameter.
We have to travel another 67 km before we reach the last planet in the Solar system, Neptune, located in the middle of Eyre Square, Galway. Here Neptune measures just under 1.9m in diameter.
Beyond Neptune the distances become even more massive. 60 km beyond Neptune just outside Clifden is the next dwarf planet, Pluto. Pluto is just a bit bigger than a tennis ball at this scale.
Around 160 km off the west coast is Eris, the largest of the dwarf planets which is just slightly
larger than Pluto.
460km off the west coast is Voyager 1 which is the most distant man made object from Earth.
2,950km from the west coast near to Nova Scotia is one of the most distant known objects in the Solar System, Sedna. Here Sedna is smaller than a golf ball!
Now for the scary part.....at this scale the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is 1,657,000 km away, over 4 times the full-scale distance from the Earth to the Moon!!39
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Captain Chaos wrote: »I was looking at the last pic in the OP's post. Someone made a big error. Think V1 and Sedna are mixed up it.
Oh right yeah - sorry didn't spot that. You're right
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Captain Chaos wrote: »I was looking at the last pic in the OP's post. Someone made a big error. Think V1 and Sedna are mixed up it.
Nope, I made no error. For all the planetary bodies (including Sedna) I used the semi-major axis i.e. the average orbital distance of the body from the Sun. Most of the bodies have orbits that are reasonably circular. Sedna however has a highly elliptical orbit:
So on my Solar System model the average orbit for Sedna would be out near Nova Scotia! I did this to show how distant some of these objects are. Hope that explains it. BTW Voyager 1 is the correct distance also.0 -
namloc1980 wrote: »Nope, I made no error. For all the planetary bodies (including Sedna) I used the semi-major axis i.e. the average orbital distance of the body from the Sun.
That's not it's current distance however, it's an average as you have pointed out - which would put it at about 500au, give or take. It's current distance is 90au, so it's a pretty big margin of error in fairness.
No worries though - your OP is good 0 -
That's not it's current distance however, it's an average as you have pointed out - which would put it at about 400au, give or take. It's current distance is 90au, so it's a pretty big margin of error in fairness.
No worries though - your OP is good
Yeah I know it's not it's current distance, but giving it's current distance wouldn't really give someone an idea of Sedna's orbital characteristics. As I said, the other bodies have reasonably circular orbits, Sedna is seriously elliptical.0 -
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