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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

There's a walk somewhere in the east of Netherland that I did with my kids a while ago, where you walk through a scale representation of the solar system. You start with Pluto (it's an old walk), then walk a very long time before you meet Neptune, then again a very long time before you come across Uranus. That's already a major part of the walk right there. Then the planets start coming quicker, and the last 10 meters or so is the inner solar system. And after that is the radio telescope array at Westerbork.

It really gives a good feel for the massive difference in distances between the inner and outer solar system. I strongly recommend it to anyone who is in that vicinity.

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My college had a similar installation, with the inner solar system on the walls of the physics/astronomy building and the other planets scattered about the campus at appropriate distances. But my favorite part was the plaque that said that somewhere in Alaska was the final piece of the installation: a scale model of the nearest star.

For the scale model in Alaska to really sink in for your story, it would have helped to know where your college was located. If your college was in the Yukon would be one thing, but if your college was in Miami that would be totally different.

That might not help without the size of the astronomy building, the size of the models, or how long the walk was to the nearest star.

Here are some approximate dimensions. In Miami the sun would be 9in or 22cm[1], the inner solar system could be depicted on a line 120ft or 35m[2] long, and Pluto would be about 1000yds or 1km[3] away.

Divide by two if the university is in San Francisco, which is about 2000 miles away from Anchorage rather than 4000. Or divide by ten if the university is in Alaska and the nearest star's model is only 400 miles away.

[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=4000+miles+*+%28diamete...

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=4000+miles+*+%28orbit+r...

[3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=4000+miles+*+%28orbit+r...

My town in France has this as a riverside walk, spread over 5 km into the next towns. Well, my hometown has the inner system over a few hundred meters, then it's vast emptyness over the next 5km :)

http://www.planetesdelyvette.universite-paris-saclay.fr/IMG/...

This site overlays a model of the solar system at the desired scale on the Google Maps location of your choice:

https://thinkzone.wlonk.com/SS/SolarSystemModel.php?obj=Sun&...

Helps with the planning process for building your own model solar system.

I remember an episode of Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman on PBS where one of the challenges was to build a scale model of the Solar System by placing planets on the sidewalk. The kids had to walk for miles to get it to scale. My at-the-time 12 y/o brain was blown

Caherdaniel, Kerry, Ireland, in a dark sky preserve [1] has a "Walk of the Planets" [2] along the Kerry Way hiking trail where both the planets and distance between them (3.5kms) are to scale. It's a really interesting way to see the relative size of the planets and the distance between them.

[1] - https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/reserves/... [2] - https://www.caherdanieldarksky.com

Sounds like a scale of 1:1,000,000,000 so the Earth is 150m from the Sun, Mars is 75m further, and Pluto somewhere around 6km. That's the same (mind boggling) scale as our local one - and to complete the picture you can put a toothpick 23.585km from the sun and move it every day 147cm further from the sun. A 20nm fleck on the tip of the toothpick is then Voyager 1 represented on the same scale.

Just want to say that I loved going there as a kid. The distances were very educative. They also had a 1kg (I think) block of iron that you could lift, and you could then try what it'd feel like with the gravitation of the different planets.

There is a similar thing (but at reduced scale) in the "Cité de l'Espace" in Toulouse, France. Just liek this site (old but gold), it really helps you to put things into perspective.

Zagreb has one of these as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Views

Ha no way. My in-laws just moved to Drenthe. I'm definitely going to check this out with the kids, thanks a lot for the tip!

Sweden has a permanent one. The inner planets are in Stockholm while the outer planets are across the rest of Sweden.

There was a touring one that was in Cambridge (UK) recently and we thoroughly enjoyed walking it even if the walk to Pluto was quite far. Walking it in reverse order would have been better, perhaps. Didn't think of that.

There is one in Zurich very similar as well. With the representations of the size of the planets.

Seems there are a whole bunch of them across the planet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model

Largest one being in Sweden, with a scale of 1:20,000,000 (spanning the whole country): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model

In comparison, both the Zurich and Netherlands one are 1:1,000,000,000

That one in Sweden is huge! Country-wide indeed.

There’s quite a few at different scales - in fact I believe the mall in Washington DC has one.

I can imagine that is type of things are the best possible way to visualize the scales that we are living in.

Would love to see something similar for bigger dimensions, e.g. distance to the nearest star, galaxy or exoplanet.

You know what I got the education I got, I memorized that, there was little new information making it a non-planet. You know those same guys call carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen metals? It's a description. In astronomy, metal means anything greater than hydrogen and helium. Every element but the first two. Change of nomenclature, really, and I guess motivated because of seeing other planetary systems.

The entire Solar System is highly aberrant. Single star, instead of binary star. Then, a moon around earth, very large moon, besides, it is the same size in the sky (varying over time) as the sun, leading to different eclipses (like anular eclipses, which accurately measured a biblical event 4000 years ago, to the day, I think it was a Tuesday). Like everything is very unique, apparently.

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