Unmanned Spaceflight.com > Solar System "to Scale" Website

lyford

Apr 13 2006, 03:52 AM

Hope you like scrolling! Though use the embedded anchor links or you will never find them

Solar System
1 pixel = 1000 km

jamescanvin

Apr 13 2006, 04:07 AM

Warning - crashes my Firefox v1.0.7 on RH Enterprise Linux

lyford

Apr 13 2006, 04:28 AM

Oops - sorry about that! Firefox 1.0.4 works fine with it on Mac OS 10.4.5....
And Internet Exploder... And Safari.... and Camino.... and OmniWeb (though it compressed the distance for some reason)
Haven't tried it with Lynx yet

TheChemist

Apr 13 2006, 01:32 PM

What a waste of space

PS. FireFox 1.5.0.1 on WinMe has no problem either.

ilbasso

Apr 15 2006, 04:29 PM

Reminds me of Steven Wright's joke: "I have a full-scale map of the United States. One mile equals one mile."

I like the 1-to-10 billion scale model of the solar system that is located outside the National Air & Space Museum (and which extends several blocks along the Mall). See http://www.jeffreybennett.com/voyage.htm

dvandorn

Apr 17 2006, 02:57 PM

Hmmm... when I load the page linked above, I see the entire solar system (at least as it's currently defined), but all of it appears in the width of my screen. The Sun and planets are all to scale, and rendered properly (not squished or anything), but the distance between them is most definitely not to scale. At all.

-the other Doug

odave

Apr 17 2006, 03:23 PM

Only the sun was visible for me when I hit that link initially - I had to do a lot of scrolling to get out to Mercury, and Pluto is waaaaay out at the very end. I wonder if it's a browser setting thing....

Anyone have enough spare time to see how long it takes to scroll to Pluto by holding the right scroll arrow down?

ljk4-1

Apr 17 2006, 03:50 PM

QUOTE (ilbasso @ Apr 15 2006, 12:29 PM)

Reminds me of Steven Wright's joke: "I have a full-scale map of the United States. One mile equals one mile."

I like the 1-to-10 billion scale model of the solar system that is located outside the National Air & Space Museum (and which extends several blocks along the Mall). See http://www.jeffreybennett.com/voyage.htm

Wright concluded that joke with "And then I folded it."

If you want a nice afternoon stroll across the entire Sol system, the
Carl Sagan Planet Walk in Ithaca, New York is most convenient. Just
under one mile one way from the Sun in the Commons to Pluto right
outside the Sciencenter.

http://sciencenter.org//saganpw/

Having been dedicated in November of 1997, some of the data on
the planets is out of date, especially regarding the number of moons
for some of the worlds, but the Sagan Planet Walk does give one a
good sense of scale of things in our celestial neighborhood.

What really blows most people's minds is when you tell them that if
they wanted to walk from this model's Pluto to the nearest star system,
Alpha Centauri, they would have to go all the way to Hawaii!

Bob Shaw

Apr 17 2006, 04:40 PM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Apr 17 2006, 03:57 PM)

Hmmm... when I load the page linked above, I see the entire solar system (at least as it's currently defined), but all of it appears in the width of my screen. The Sun and planets are all to scale, and rendered properly (not squished or anything), but the distance between them is most definitely not to scale. At all.

-the other Doug

other Doug:

You have a 20 AU screen?

Bet it's a G5!

Does it cause... ...tides?

Bob Shaw

lyford

Apr 17 2006, 05:45 PM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Apr 17 2006, 07:57 AM)

The Sun and planets are all to scale, and rendered properly (not squished or anything), but the distance between them is most definitely not to scale. At all.

That happened to me in Omniweb but not in Firefox.... hmmmmm.... did you check your framostat?