As we've noted before, the Solar System is a big place. You can watch a voyage from the Sun to Jupiter, and it takes 45 minutes at the speed of light. A scale model of the Solar System, with the Sun the size of a weather balloon, is 3.5 miles across ... and that's not even including Pluto. And this virtual scale model, a browser-based rendition by John Worth with the moon just one pixel in size, is no less impressive. I can't do it justice here — the site surely holds the record for the widest horizontal scrollbar on any page on the Web — so here's a little snippet of the Earth-Moon system:
While you can use the astrological symbols at the top to jump to the planets, try manually scrolling to get the full effect of the vast spaces between them. There are also some useful tidbits to discover along the way...
That's all from us here at the blog for this week. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you back here on Monday. Enjoy!