Planet table

Solar System Scale Model

This helps to visualize the vast distances

Merc.

Venus

Earth

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Uranus

Nept.

Pluto

Planet Sizes and Distances from Sun:

The table shows the actual diameters of the planets and each planet's average distance from the sun. To help visualize the huge distances in space, the scaled sizes and distances are also provided. In fact, that is the whole point of this page, to make it easy for teachers and others to use a beachball as a sun, and measure off how far away the tiny planets would be. To create an accurate model, the sun should be 330 mm in diameter, or 13 inches, to match the scale of the planets' pictures.

[ 2018 note: The planet & sun pictures were designed many years ago when a typical computer monitor had a resolution of 640 X 480, so the image on the screen was larger than on a high-resolution contemporary monitor; this was all in the pre-Smart Phone era. Print the planet pictures at 72 pixels per inch to match the scale on the table. Plan B: Print them whatever size, then recalculate the distances in meters after comparing the print size of Jupiter to the table's assumed size of 34 millimeters. Likewise, the sun will be a different size than the original 330 mm.]
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Distance (Scaled to meters)	14	26	35	54	184	338	681	1066	1399
	Mercury	Venus	Earth	Mars	Jupiter	Saturn	Uranus	Neptune	Pluto
Distance Miles (millions)	36	67	93	142	483	887	1,784	2,796	3,666
Distance Kilometers (millions)	58	108	150	228	778	1,427	2,780	4,497	5,900
Diameter (Scaled to millimeters)	1	3	3	2	34	29	12	12	1/2
Diameter Miles	3,032	7,519	7,926	4,194	88,736	74,978	32,193	30,775	1,423(?)
Diameter Kilometers	4,880	12,100	12,756	6,794	142,800	120,660	51,810	49,528	2,290