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A Virtual Tour of the Solar System Have you ever wondered just how big space really is? It's huge. In fact, it's astronomical! A great way to learn about the space is to take a tour of a scale model of our solar system. Jeffrey Bennett, author of Max Goes to the Moon and one of the Big Kid Science founders, helped create the Voyage Scale Model Solar System on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. and the Colorado Scale Model Solar System on the University of Colorado Campus in Boulder. The Voyage model depicts the Sun, the nine planets, and the distances between them all on the same scale of 1 to 10 billion. That is, the real objects and distances are 10 billion times larger than the objects and distances in the model. On this scale, the planets range in size from a dust speck for Pluto to a ball bearing for Earth to a marble for Jupiter. The sun is about the size of a large grapefruit. It's only 15 big steps from the Sun to Earth, and about a 10 minute walk to Pluto. Click here to take a Virtual Tour of the Voyage model. Start at the Sun, then click on the planet images along the left side to choose where to go next. Click here to learn more about the Voyage model. |
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