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| Here's a text snapshot of a crude spreadsheet that I created: | We can use that mental image to imagine how much sunlight hits the planets. Looking from the position of the Sun, how much of the sky is blocked by planets? Scaled to a 2.2cm Earth-sized marble, the distance from the igloo-sized Sun to the marble-sized Earth would be more than a kilometer, not visible to the naked eye. Jupiter, a bit smaller than a volleyball, would also be "invisible" at 5.3 kilometer distance. To a first approximation, the solar system is empty. |
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| ||<-8> Earth-Marble Scaled Solar System Sunlight Fraction.ods KHL 2021/11/25 || ||<-8> || |
Here's a text snapshot of a crude {{ attachment:SunlightFraction.ods | spreadsheet}} that I created: ||<-8> Earth-Marble Scaled Solar System || |
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| ||<-8> || | ||<-6> ||<-2> || |
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| https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/pdfs/scaless_reference.pdf | Data from https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/pdfs/scaless_reference.pdf and other sources |
Scaling Earth to a Marble
One of my toys is a blue marble with green continents painted on it. It not perfectly round, but a few random measurements with a 10-micrometer-repeatable dial caliper average to 21.85 millimeters diameter. What if we scaled the solar system, planets and distances, so that the Earth was the size of that marble?
We can use that mental image to imagine how much sunlight hits the planets. Looking from the position of the Sun, how much of the sky is blocked by planets? Scaled to a 2.2cm Earth-sized marble, the distance from the igloo-sized Sun to the marble-sized Earth would be more than a kilometer, not visible to the naked eye. Jupiter, a bit smaller than a volleyball, would also be "invisible" at 5.3 kilometer distance. To a first approximation, the solar system is empty.
Here's a text snapshot of a crude that I created:
Earth-Marble Scaled Solar System |
|||||||
|
Marble Scaled |
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|
Radius |
Distance |
sun fraction |
Diameter |
Distance |
||
|
km |
km |
AU |
|
Scaled m |
Scaled m |
|
Sun |
695700 |
|
2.386 |
0 |
|||
|
|
||||||
Mercury |
2440 |
5.790E+07 |
0.39 |
4.440E-10 |
10.7% |
0.008 |
397 |
Venus |
6052 |
1.062E+08 |
0.71 |
8.119E-10 |
19.5% |
0.021 |
728 |
Earth |
6371 |
1.496E+08 |
1.00 |
4.534E-10 |
10.9% |
0.02185 |
1026 |
Mars |
3386 |
2.279E+08 |
1.52 |
5.519E-11 |
1.3% |
0.012 |
1563 |
Jupiter |
69173 |
7.786E+08 |
5.20 |
1.973E-09 |
47.4% |
0.237 |
5341 |
Saturn |
57316 |
1.434E+09 |
9.58 |
3.997E-10 |
9.6% |
0.197 |
9833 |
Uranus |
25266 |
2.873E+09 |
19.20 |
1.934E-11 |
0.5% |
0.087 |
19703 |
Neptune |
24552 |
4.495E+09 |
30.05 |
7.458E-12 |
0.2% |
0.084 |
30833 |
total |
4.164E-09 |
100.0% |
|
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Data from https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/pdfs/scaless_reference.pdf and other sources