Solar System models, especially mechanical models, called '' orreries'', that illustrate the relative positions and motions of the

planet A planet is a large, Hydrostatic equilibrium, rounded Astronomical object, astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets b ...

s and

moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

s in the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Sola ...

have been built for centuries. While they often showed relative sizes, these models were usually not built to scale. The enormous ratio of interplanetary distances to planetary diameters makes constructing a

scale model A scale model is a physical model that is geometrically similar to an object (known as the ''prototype''). Scale models are generally smaller than large prototypes such as vehicles, buildings, or people; but may be larger than small protot ...

of the Solar System a challenging task. As one example of the difficulty, the distance between the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

and the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

is almost 12,000 times the diameter of the Earth. If the smaller planets are to be easily visible to the naked eye, large outdoor spaces are generally necessary, as is some means for highlighting objects that might otherwise not be noticed from a distance. The

Boston Museum of Science The Museum of Science (MoS) is a nature and science museum and indoor zoological establishment located in Science Park, a plot of land in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, spanning the Charles River. Along with over 7 ...

had placed bronze models of the planets in major public buildings, all on similar stands with interpretive labels.Boston Community Solar System
at Waymarking.com. For example, the model of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

was located in the cavernous South Station waiting area. The properly-scaled, basket-ball-sized model is 1.3 miles (2.14 km) from the model Sun which is located at the museum, graphically illustrating the immense empty space in the Solar System. The objects in such large models do not move. Traditional orreries often did move, and some used clockworks to display the relative speeds of objects accurately. These can be thought of as being correctly scaled in ''time'', instead of ''distance''.

Permanent true scale models

Many towns and institutions have built outdoor scale models of the Solar System. Here is a table comparing these models with the actual system.

Other models of the Solar System: historic, temporary, virtual, or dual-scale

Several sets of

geocaching Geocaching (, ) is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called ''geocaches'' or ''caches'', at sp ...

caches have been laid out as Solar System models.

References

External links

A list of websites related to Solar System modelsThe Otford Solar SystemAn accurate web-based scroll map of the Solar System scaled to the Moon being 1 pixelAn online scale model
(does not work in some browsers)
An online 3D modelAn article on the Solar System in Maine

* ttp://kletzenbauerzeitlichtung.homepage.t-online.de/Texte/Planetenwanderwege/planetenwanderwege.html A map with Solar System models in Germanybr>A tool to calculate the diameters and distances needed for an accurate scale modelTo Scale: The Solar System
- video of model built in desert with Earth as the size of a marble. {{Solar System models

Model A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , . Models can be divided in ...

Physics education Scale modeling *

Permanent true scale models

Other models of the Solar System: historic, temporary, virtual, or dual-scale

See also

References

External links