Get some perspective

I received these cool pics in an email. I thought they were interesting and was curious about some of the stars I’d never heard of. This lead to a round of Googling…

Body Diameter (miles) Distance from Sun (miles) Distance (light minutes) Sun 864,938 0 0 Mercury 3,032 35,983,610 3 Venus 7,521 67,232,360 6 Earth 7,926 92,957,100 8 Mars 4,222 141,635,300 12 Jupiter 88,846 483,632,000 43 Saturn 74,898 888,188,000 79 Uranus 31,763 1,783,950,000 159 Neptune 30,778 2,798,842,000 250 Pluto (dwarf planet) 1413 3,674,491,000 328

Asteroids The vast majority of asteroids are grouped in the asteroid belt, which is more like a loose grouping than a belt, and lies between 1.8 and 4.5 A.U. (1 A.U. is the average distance between Earth and the sun) from the sun – between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids are made of rock and metal. Comets Current theory proposes that most comets originate in the Oort Cloud – the vast cloud of comets that surrounds the solar system out to an estimated distance of two light-years – or the Kuiper Belt – the belt of comets and asteroids extending from between 30-50 A.U.. Comets usually stay in the Oort Cloud or Kuiper Belt; however, if a passing object (such as a star) exerts enough gravity, the comet might be nudged free. Sometimes its new path will expel it from the solar system all together, and it is doomed to roam interstellar space. The alternate path takes it into the inner solar system, where it can become a short- or long-period comet. From: http://home.case.edu/~sjr16/index.html

One light year is approximately 5.8 trillion miles (5,878,482,164,161 miles) or 525,600 light minutes. One light minute is about 11181134.65 miles.
Depending upon the definition the diameter of our solar system is between 78 AU and 100,000 AU or between 6,510,000,000 (6.51 billion) miles and 9,300,000,000,000 (9.3 trillion) miles. That’s quite a difference of opinion guys. Now that they have “planet” properly defined maybe they’ll tackle “solar system”!.

The Sun’s diameter is 864,938 miles (1,391,980 km). This is almost 10 times larger than the planet Jupiter and about 109 times as big as the Earth. The volume of the Sun is 1,299,400 times bigger than the volume of the Earth; about 1,300,000 Earths could fit inside the Sun

The star Sirius, is the brightest star in our night sky. Distance from Sun: 8 1/2 light-years http://www.siriusrising.com/sirius.htm

The star Pollux is about 33 light years from Sol. http://www.solstation.com/stars2/pollux.htm
Arcturus is 37 light years away.

If Antares were in place of our Sun, it would slightly more than encompass the orbit of Jupiter. It’s about 600 light years from us.

Here’s another version