Alachua Astronomy Club: Solar System Walk Table

	Alachua Astronomy Club, Inc.	Member Astronomical League	Member International Dark-Sky Association
	Solar System Walk	Member Astronomical League	Member International Dark-Sky Association
	29°39' N, 82°21' W Altitude: 50 Meters (more or less)		Updated Jan. 20, 2010
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Scale of The Gainesville Solar System Walk

Click for Location Map

The Gainesville Solar System Walk will use a four billion to one scale (4,000,000,000:1). This allows the solar system from the Sun to Pluto to fit within a 0.9 mile piece of N.W. 8 Avenue, the approximate distance from N.W. 34 Street to N.W. 23 Street, an almost level, straight stretch of road. In addition, the sizes (diameters) of the Sun and planets will also be scaled to size using the same 4 billion to one ratio.

See maps for placement of solar system objects:

Location Map (11K gif, 556x414)
Larger Map (15K gif, 721x537)
Black & White Map (12.5K gif, 676x543) — Best for Printing

[Return to Solar System Walk]

Project Design Measurements

Prepared by Howard L. Cohen
University of Florida
February 23, 1999

Actual Sizes These Columns Show Sizes for Model¹

Object Orbit Radius Object Diameter Scaled Orbit Radius Scaled Object Diameter

(kilometers) (kilometers) (meters) (feet) (millimeters) (inches)

1. Sun --- 1,392,000 --- --- 348.0 13.70

2. Mercury 57,900,000 4,879 14.48 47.5 1.2 0.05

3. Venus 108,200,000 12,104 27.05 88.7 3.0 0.12

4. Earth² 149,600,000 12,756 37.40 122.7 3.2 0.13

Moon 384,500 ³ 3,476 96.13 ⁴ (3.8) ⁵ 0.9 0.03

5. Mars 227,900,000 6,794 56.98 186.9 1.7 0.07

6. Jupiter 778,300,000 142,980 194.58 638.4 35.7 1.41

7. Saturn 1,429,400,000 120,540 357.35 1,172.4 30.1 1.19

8. Uranus 2,875,000,000 51,120 718.75 2,358.1 12.8 0.50

9. Neptune 4,504,400,000 49,530 1,126.10 3,694.6 12.4 0.49

10. Pluto² 5,915,800,000 2,300 1,478.95 ⁶ 4,852.2 ⁶ 0.6 0.02

Charon 19,100 ³ 1,200 4.78 ⁴ (0.2) ⁵ 0.3 0.01

Notes

¹The scale factor adopted for this model is 4,000,000,000 :1
²Both Earth and Pluto are actually "double planets"—including their companions (Moon and Charon respectively) is optional.
³The orbit radii of the Moon and Charon are their distances from Earth and Pluto respectively.
⁴For Moon and Charon, scaled orbit radius is this column is in millimeters.
⁵For Moon and Charon, scaled orbit radius in this column is in inches.
⁶The scaled distance from the Sun to Pluto is 1.479 kilometers (about 0.919 miles).

Additional Notes:

Orbit radii are actually mean distances of each object from Sun (or from Earth for Moon, and from Pluto for Charon).
Object diameters are equatorial diameters; for Jovian planets, diameters are at 1 bar pressure (101.325 kPa).

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