Solar System model

Jupiter at South Station, part of Museum of Science, Boston scale model

Solar System models, especially mechanical models, called orreries, that illustrate the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons in the Solar System have been built for centuries. While they often showed relative sizes, these models were usually not built to scale. The enormous ratio of interplanetary distances to planetary diameters makes constructing a scale model of the Solar System a challenging task. As one example of the difficulty, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is almost 12,000 times the diameter of the Earth.

If the smaller planets are to be easily visible to the naked eye, large outdoor spaces are generally necessary, as is some means for highlighting objects that might otherwise not be noticed from a distance. The objects in such models do not move. Traditional orreries often did move and some used clockworks to make the relative speeds of objects accurate. These can be thought of as being correctly scaled in time instead of distance.

Scale models in various locations

Several towns and institutions have built outdoor scale models of the Solar System. Here is a table comparing these models.

Several sets of geocaching caches have been laid out as solar system models.

A model based on a classroom globe

Most classroom globes are 41 cm (16 inches) in diameter. If the Earth were reduced to this size, the Moon would be a 10 cm (4 in) baseball floating 12 metres (40 feet) away. The Sun would be a beach ball 14 stories tall (somewhat smaller than the Spaceship Earth ride at Epcot) floating 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) away. While a complete model to this scale has never been built, a Solar System built centered in Washington DC, London, or Sydney, to that scale (approximately 1:31 000 000) would look like this:

If the scale of the above model is increased to 1:310 000 000, i.e. all distances and sizes reduced by a factor of 10, then the Earth and Venus can be modeled by ping pong balls, the Moon and smaller planets by various size marbles or lumps of modeling clay, the gas giants by balloons or larger playing balls, and a circle the diameter of the Sun can be drawn on the floor of most classrooms. The scale distance to α Centauri would be 1/3 of the way to the Moon.

Some planetaria and related museums often use this type of scale model of the Solar System, with a planetarium dome representing the Sun. Examples of this can be seen in planetaria like the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, the Clark Planetarium, the Griffith Obervatory, the Louisiana Arts and Sciences Museum, the Adventure Science Center, etc.

See also

• Numerical model of the Solar System
• Orrery

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Solar System models.

• A list of websites related to Solar System models
• Otford Solar System model
• An online scale model (does not work in some browsers)
• An online 3D model
• An article on the Solar System in Maine
• An article about a temporary exhibit in Melbourne, Australia
• A map with Solar System models in Germany
• A tool to calculate the diameters and distances needed for an accurate scale model

The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth Mars Ceres Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto Haumea Makemake Eris Planetary Double planet Dwarf planet Giant planet Gas giant Ice giant Planetary system Rings Jovian Saturnian (Rhean) Uranian Neptunian Moons Terrestrial (Moon / Luna other) Martian Jovian Saturnian Uranian Neptunian Plutonian Haumean Eridian SSSBs Meteoroids Minor planets Asteroids Asteroid belt Centaurs TNOs Kuiper belt Scattered disc Comets Oort cloud Lists Solar System objects (by size) Minor planets Portals Solar System Astronomy Earth sciences Mars Uranus Cosmology Solar System → Local Interstellar Cloud → Local Bubble → Gould Belt → Orion Arm → Milky Way → Milky Way subgroup → Local Group → Virgo Supercluster → Laniakea Supercluster → Observable universe → Universe Each arrow (→) may be read as "within" or "part of".