The Solar System is BIG: A Comparison
First published: Monday September 30th, 2024
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Beginning
The Solar System is large. Extremely large. The Universe is unfathomably large. Actually, all distances mentioned here are unfathomably large. This blog was originally going to have another section about the Universe, measured in light years. But the problem is 1. None of us understand how big a light year is 2. None of us know enough obscure stars in the Universe to make those comparisons 3. Light years aren't even big enough to measure it. 4. I would have to find a bigger length, maybe in Milky Ways, or light millennia. I might make a sequel about the Universe, but we'll see. There's some good comparison videos online for y'all if y'all wish.
In this blog we shall use AU (astronomical units) with one AU being one line. And an AU is the distance between the earth and the Sun (149,598,000 km). 1 AU is over 11,700 times the diameter of the Earth, and about 389 times the distance between the Earth and Moon. If you drove at 100 miles per hour for 100 years, you would nearly drive one AU.
Distance (AU)
Earth, unremarkable rock.
2
3
Start of Asteroid Belt
4
5
6
7
Distance light travels in an hour
8
9
10
Saturn, has rings
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Uranus, spins backwards like Venus
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Neptune, farthest planet, start of Kuiper belt
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
Pluto (planet wannabe)
41
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
End of Kuiper Belt
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
New Horizons (probe)
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
Eris (dwarf planet)
69
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
Pioneer 11 (probe)
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
Pioneer 10 (probe)
137
Voyager 2 (probe)
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
Voyager 1 (probe), farthest artificial object
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
Distance light travels in a day
- Neodymium
Duplicating 173 split view text boxes takes forever and a half
nah is should say 11,700x not 11.7 million. ty for correcting that! nothing else should err
also its not like there’s nothing there, theres a ton of stuff