See also: How to determine the distances to faraway stars and galaxies |
PROPER SCALE
The distances between the planets are drawn to scale in this diagram, but the sizes of the planets and the sun are vastly exagerated because the scale size of the Sun, for example, would be an almost invisible point of only 0.014 millimeter in diameter, and the Earth would be a tiny 0.00013 mm, that is, about a thousand times smaller than this period . On the same scale the distance to nearest star (alpha centauri) would be 0.25 miles (400 m) and the distance to the nearest galaxy (Magellanic cloud) would be an astonishing 8,000 miles (12 880 km), or in reality, 137 000 light-years. As a comparison: light requires a bit over eight minutes to travel from the sun to the earth (93 million miles) and over 5 hours to travel to the outer reaches of Pluto.
The fastest spacecraft so far designed is presently leaving our solar system. It would have to travel over
90,000 years to reach the nearest star, which means travelling to other stars will be impossible for the
forseeable future ! One light-year is about 5,900 billion miles in length, or 5,900,000,000,000 miles. |
www link : An Atlas to the Universe |