How Big Our Solar System

Is Russia Wider Than The Moon

The surface area of the Moon is equivalent to the surface area of Russia, the United States, and Canada combined. In terms of wideness, Russia has an east-west extent of around 9,000 km / 5,600 mi, and a north-south width of 2,500 to 4,000 km / 1,500 to 2,500 mi.

This means that Russia is wider than the Moon when compared from the east-west extent, but smaller in the north-south width.

Walk The Solar System

To walk the solar system youll need to convert the Astronomical Units to something walkable.

If you multiply each distance from the Sun by 100cm you can easily walk and mark out the Solar System, although you will need a big open space.

For example:

Start with the Sun at 0 cm.

Mercury 40 cm

Neptune 30 metres

Another idea is to use toilet paper and roll out a separate strip for each planet along the ground.

Remember 1 AU is 93 MILLION MILES!!! To put this into context the diameter of the Earth is only 7926 miles!!!

Grab the activity sheet below!

The Scale Of The Solar System

So how big is the Solar System? To find out, lets hop aboard a wave of light emitted by the Sun: we can get a sense of the distances involved by paying attention to our travel time.

Astronomers express these distances in astronomical units , a quantity equal to the average distance between Earth and the Sun over the year. One AU is equivalent to roughly 150 million kilometres.

Within a quarter of an hour of leaving the Sun, we have passed the orbits of all the inner, rocky planets: Mercury after 3 minutes, Venus at 6 minutes, Earth at 8 minutes and just 13 minutes into the journey.

Another 15 minutes takes us through the AsteroidBelt, home to the dwarf planet Ceres , whose orbit we pass at 23 minutes.

We must travel nearly the same distance again to reach the orbit of Jupiter at 43 minutes. With increasingly large gaps between planets, it takes almost 3.5 hours to traverse the realm of the gas giants.

The orbit of Neptune is 4 hours 10 minutes into our journey.

5.5 hours from the Sun, we enter the KuiperBelt and continue through it for one hour and 10 minutes. We begin to emerge from the heliosphere into interstellar space around 12 hours into our journey.

Crossing beyond the OortCloud, however, could take us as long as a year.

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Procedure: Scale Model Of Distances From Sun

• Permanent Marker

Procedure: Scale Model Of Relative Diameters Of Planets

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The Solar System: Facts About Our Cosmic Neighborhood

Here’s a look at our solar system, from the scorching surface of Venus to the home of the largest volcano.

The solar system is a collection of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, dust and gas that orbit our local star, the sun. It includes the rocky inner planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.

Between Mars and Jupiter is a collection of asteroids known as the asteroid belt, while beyond Neptune is where small icy bodies, like Pluto and comets, live.

Planetary Size And Distance Comparison

Students use metric measurement, including astronomical units , to investigate the relative size and distance of the planets in our solar system. Then they use scale to model relative distance.

Grades

Earth Science, Astronomy, Experiential Learning, Mathematics

Contents

2 Images, 4 PDFs, 1 Link

This lists the logos of programs or partners of NG Education which have provided or contributed the content on this page.Program

• Science Netlinks: Planet Size Comparison

• What do you notice about the size of the planets?
• How do you think the sizes of the planets compare?
• Would it be easy to model the planet sizes? Why or why not?
• How could we model differences? What everyday objects could represent planets and the sun?

• Sun: stands at the edge of the area
• Mercury = 1 step from sun
• Venus = 2 steps from sun
• Earth = 2.5 steps from sun
• Asteroid belt = 8 steps from sun
• Jupiter = 13 steps from sun
• Saturn = 24 steps from sun
• Uranus = 49 steps from sun
• Neptune = 76 steps from sun
• Kuiper belt = 100 steps from sun

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Activity #1 Create Scale Models Of The Sun And Planets Out Of Paper

This is a great activity for all ages and abilities. To get a better grasp of the relative sizes of the planets and our sun, you will draw them to scale on paper and cut them out.

See my suggestions below for adjusting/expanding according to age/ability.

What youll need

• Paper, cardboard or fabric
• For the Sun you will need a sheet that is 109 cm by 109 cm. You can tape separate sheets of paper together to make one big sheet. We used a yellow bed sheet and folded it to the right size.

What youll do

• Draw and cut out circles to represent the Sun and all the planets .
• In order to compare everything to the size of Earth, we will measure everything in Earth diameters .
• Use 1 cm to represent one Earth diameter.
• Dont worry if you dont make perfect circles none of the planets are perfect circles.

What If The Moon Was Twice As Big

If the Moon would be twice as big, then solar eclipses would be even more common. The path of totality would be significantly wider, maybe over 3,600 km / 2,000 mi the wideness of the Moons umbra. Totality would last much longer, perhaps more than an hour.

During totality, the sky would be much darker than before, and annular solar eclipse would cease to exist. Tides would be significantly larger on our Earth, but this assumes the Moon would have the same mass. If it didnt, then it is highly possible that it would collide with our Earth.

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How Old Is Our Solar System

About 4.6 billion years ago, a giant cloud of dust and gas known as the solar nebula collapsed in on itself and began to form what would eventually become the solar system’s sun and planets. Meteorites, or pieces of space rock that have fallen to Earth, have helped scientists figure out the age of the solar system. Some of these small pieces have broken off of moons or planets and can yield interesting scientific information about the chemistry and history of their home body. Others have been traveling around the solar system since its beginning, before the planets even existed. The Allende meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969 and scattered over Mexico, is the oldest known meteorite, at 4.55 billion years old.

How Big Is The Moon In Comparison To Earth

How does the Moon compare to Earth? Our Moons diameter is more than a quarter of Earths diameter, while its mass is 1/81 that of Earths. It basically weighs 80 times less than our Earth. The Moons radius is only 27% of our Earths radius. If our Earth were hollow, it would take around 50 Moons to fill it.

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How Long Would It Take To Walk Around The Moon

If you could walk continuously at a speed of 3.1 mph, you could walk around the Moon in around 91 days / 2,188 hours. However, if we were to talk realistically, and include rests, sleep, eating time, flat levelness, and other things, it would probably take you around a year or less to walk around the Moon once.

How Big Is The Sun Facts & Size Comparison

With a radius of 432,687 miles and a diameter of 864,000 miles, our beloved star, the Sun, is the biggest celestial object in the solar system. The substantial size and mass of the Sun enable it to generate an incredible amount of gravitational force that keeps the planets of the solar system in orbit around it as it travels around our galaxy, the Milky Way.

In this article, we will compare the size of the Sun against the size of the planets in the solar system as well as against the size of the largest known stars in the universe. We are also going to calculate the time it would take to travel around the Sun using different means of transportation. Who said astronomy couldnt be fun?

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How Big Is The Moon

HomeSpace QuestionsHow Big is the Moon?

The Moon is the only natural and permanent satellite of Earth. Some planets have two moons, like , others have tens of moons, such as Jupiter, while the planet with the most moons is Saturn, which has 82 moons.

Moons vary in size, shape, and composition, and our Moon is in the top 10 list of the biggest satellites in our Solar System. How big is the Moon?

Our Moon has a mean radius of 1,737 kilometers / 1,079 miles, while its polar radius is 1,736 km / 1,078 mi, and its equatorial radius is 1,738 km / 1,079 mi. The Moons diameter is 3,474 km / 2,158 mi, and it is the biggest Moon in the Solar System relative to the size of its planet.

When it comes to other satellites, the Moon is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. So lets take a look at the top 10 biggest moons in the Solar System.

Guide To Adjusting Or Expanding Activity #1

Heres a short guide for adjusting activity #1 according to age or ability.

Level 1

• You do the measuring, drawing and cutting
• If you are using paper, let your child colour or paint the Sun and planets
• You can use the opportunity to talk about colours and shapes
• Then let your child play with the resulting discs
• They can practice putting them in order by size or position from the Sun
• Talk about the letter that each planets name starts with

Level 2

• Let your child do the cutting
• If your child is learning to read or write, once you have created the planets you or they can also create labels with the names of the planets and match each planet to its name

• Allow your child to do the measuring, drawing and cutting
• They can also write the names of each planet on the labels
• Optionally, draw some features on the larger planets, like Jupiters red spot, Earths oceans and continents, Saturns rings
• Sort the planets into the rocky planets, gas giants and ice giants

Level 4

• If your child is interested in geometry this is a great opportunity to talk about the geometry of a circle
• Show your child that the circumference of Earth and Venus is pi
• Ask your child to calculate the circumference of the other planets

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The Size Of The Sun Compared To The Planets Of The Solar System

To fully understand the scale of our sun, lets compare its size to each planet of our solar system.

• Mercury: The Sun is 277 times larger than Mercury. 21 million Mercury-sized planets could fit inside the Sun.
• Venus: The Sun is 115 times larger than Venus. 1.5 million Venus-sized planets could fit inside the Sun.
• Earth: The Sun is 109 times larger than Earth. 1.3 million Earth-sized planets could fit inside the Sun.
• The Sun is 207 times larger than Mars. 7 million Mars-sized planets could fit inside the Sun.
• Jupiter: The Sun is 11 times larger than Jupiter. 1,000 Jupiter-sized planets could fit inside the Sun.
• Saturn: The Sun is 12 times larger than Saturn. 1,600 Saturn-sized planets could fit inside the Sun.
• Neptune: The Sun is 27.7 times larger than Neptune. 21,000 Neptune-sized planets could fit inside the Sun.
• Uranus: The Sun is 27.4 times larger than Uranus. 22,000 Uranus-sized planets could fit inside the Sun.
• Bonus: Pluto: The Sun is 585 times larger than Pluto. 200 million Pluto-sized dwarf planets could fit inside the Sun.

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How Many Moons Can Fit In The Sun

The Sun is gigantic, and if it were hollow, you could fill it with around 64.3 million Earth moons. If you could fill it with Earth-sized planets, you would need about 1.3 million Earths.

The Sun has a radius of 696.340 km / 432.685 mi and a diameter of 1.39 million km / 864.000 mi. It is 330,000 times more massive than Earth.

Top 10 Biggest Moons In The Solar System

The top 10 biggest moons in our Solar System are genuinely gigantic, with some of them being even bigger than some of the Solar Systems planets, like Mercury, or they make dwarf planets such as Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, or Ceres, look small.

As, such the top ten biggest moons in the Solar System are Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, Io, Luna , Europa, Triton, Titania, Rhea, and Oberon.

Four of the biggest moons in our Solar System belong to the biggest planet in our Solar System, namely Jupiter. Those moons are Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa.

Ganymede is the biggest moon in the Solar System, bigger than the planet Mercury and all the dwarf planets. At the same time, Io, Callisto, and Europa are smaller than Mercury but more prominent than all the dwarf planets.

Out of the remaining six, two of the biggest moons in the Solar System belong to Saturn, the second biggest planet in the Solar System, and they are Titan and Rhea.

Titan, like its parent planet, also ranks in the second place, being the 2nd biggest moon in the Solar System. It is also bigger than Mercury and all the other dwarf planets. Rhea, on the other hand, is bigger only than the dwarf planets Makemake and Ceres.

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How Did Our Solar System Form

Scientists think the solar system formed when a nearby exploding star, called a supernova, triggered the collapse of the solar nebula. According to this theory, the explosion sent shock waves through space, and those shock waves pushed parts of the nebula closer together, leading to collapse. The supernova may have even seeded material into the nebula, Live Science previously reported. For instance, scientists have found that aluminum-26, an element formed only in the hearts of stars, most likely originated from a series of nearby supernovas, Live Science sister site Space.com reported .

How Big Is The Moon In Comparison To The United States

The United States is 4,506 km / 2,800 mi wide when measured horizontally from the eastern seaboard to the west coast West Quoddy Head in the east to the Point Arena in the West. Thus the Moon is smaller in diameter than the United States, however.

The United States is 2,545 km / 1,582 mi from north to south, and thus, the Moon is smaller across than the United States is wide.

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Our Solar System’s Planets

Eight confirmed planets and many dwarf planets orbit the sun. According to NASA , “the order and arrangement of the planets and other bodies in our solar system is due to the way the solar system formed.” Rocky materials could withstand the young sun’s immense heat, so the first four planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are small, with rocky surfaces. Beyond them, “materials we are used to seeing as ice, liquid or gas settled in the outer regions of the young solar system,” NASA says, namely the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.