Solar system scale model

Kragen Javier Sitaker, 2017-04-18 (1 minute)

Suppose you wanted to build a scale model of the solar system at manageable scale. For example, 5 meters in diameter.

You probably have to include at least out to Neptune. The Oort Cloud maybe isn’t really necessary. But omitting Neptune would be unreasonable. Neptune orbits at 30.1 AUs, and if your model only has one side of the solar system, then you could make 30.1 AUs correspond to 5 meters.

30.1 AUs is 4.5e12 meters, so the scale of the model is about 1e12:1. At this scale:

It would be super awesome if you could continuously maintain a carbon arc or something similarly bright at the position of the Sun, so that you could see what the Sun looks like from different distances. This might be kind of dangerous though.

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