This Project is a Scale Model of Our Solar System.
Model Scale: 8,436,360,000 : 1
(Eight and a Half Billion to One)
Our Solar System is large, very large, immensely large. From the Sun to the edges of the Oort Cloud – our Solar System is over 65 billion miles in diameter. To fit the complete Solar System in a scale model is difficult, did I mention it’s size?
This scale model is from the Sun to Pluto. This is an arbitrary choice and one I made for aesthetic and mathematical reasons. I grew up with this arrangement as ‘The Solar System’ and even though Pluto is now a dwarf planet, it and the Kuiper belt are a noticeable boundary marker. I also wanted to contain this model in the ‘campground’ – which I measured to aproximitly 2300 feet from the corner of the road near my trailer to the end of quiet land.
This model was built from there, for there, with The Sun being a reasonable 6.5 inches (165 cm).
Where I got my information from:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/
and
http://thinkzone.wlonk.com/SS/SolarSystemModel.php
These two websites were what I used to figure out the scale of this model. I input The Sun size until Pluto’s orbit was about 2300 feet.
I moved the setup from the campground to the parking lot so we could feel all that empty space. Setting up The Sun nearer the campground end and Pluto out towards Highway 60.
There is just a bit of fudging of numbers for this Scale Model. The Planet sizes are tiny – and I have done my best to measure them and all distances accurately. The Sun (foam ball of brilliance) is slightly larger than 165 cm – I took what I could find at the hobby store.
