This is really cool. On Space.com there is a whole page with a bunch of facts about the Alpha Centauri system, including the newly found planet Alpha Centauri Bb. Most of the stuff I knew about (since these are the kind of things I’m interested in) but seeing things ‘graphically’ really makes it more cool!!
Alpha Centauri Infographic – Linked from Space.com.
I saw a picture of solar flare this morning comparing it to the size of the Earth. Years ago as a kid I used some old mainframe stream paper to ‘draw’ the solar system at scale (1/1 000 000 000 000). That really puts the whole solar system into perspective (about 9 meters long to fit Pluto on furthest point). The following things could/can be observed using stuff at this ‘scale’.
| Object | Description |
|---|---|
| The Sun | A little ball of 1 millimeter in diameter |
| Earth | would be 15 centimeters away from the sun (Moon about 0.4mm away from Earth) |
| Jupiter | about 0.8 meters away (and 0.15mm in diameter) |
| Saturn | about 1.3 meters (rings about 0.2mm in diameter) |
| Neptune | about 4.5 meters |
| Pluto | around 6 meters (average, varies from 4.4m to about 7.3m) |
| Voyager 1 | is about 18 meters away |
| 1 light year | is about 11 kilometers away (10.8km) |
| Proxima Centauri (The closest star) | would be about 45 kilometers away! |
| Sirius (The brightest star) | about 93 kilometers away! |
| Betelgeuse | about 6940 kilometers away! (diameter roughly 1 meter estimate) |
| Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis, middle star of the Orion belt) | about 14 000 kilometers away |
| The largest star known (estimated) | has a diameter of about 1.5 meters |
| Milky way galaxy diameter | about 1 000 000 kilometers! |
| Andromeda galaxy | about 24 000 000 kilometers away!! |
| Speed of light | about 1 meter per hour!!! |
Kinda put things into perspective – especially the speed of light
Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO