Today we’ve prepared for you a collection of images that show just how small our Earth is compared to the rest of the universe. And we’re pretty sure they will make your problems seem so minuscule, you’ll realize they’re not even worth breaking a sweat over.
This is Earth, our home planet
Here it is next to the other 7 planets of our solar system
Our 4.568 billion-year-old solar system consists of 8 planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune), 3 dwarf planets (Ceres, Pluto, Eris), and, of course, the Sun. That is if you’re not counting all of the moons and asteroids inside it.
Here’s how far Earth is from the moon – doesn’t seem like that far, right?
Turns out you can actually fit every planet in the solar system in that distance!
Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system – here’s how tiny North America looks compared to it
When we say Jupiter is big, we mean it’s huge. Here are some numbers to help you understand just how big it is: Earth’s radius is 6371.0 km (3958.8 mi) while Jupiter’s radius is 69,911 km (43,441 mi). Its surface area is 6.1419×1010 km2 (2.3714×1010 sq mi) – that means it’s almost 122 times bigger than Earth!
And then there’s Saturn – here’s how big it is compared to Earth
Here’s how Saturn’s rings would look like if they were placed around Earth
Just in case you thought we forgot about Pluto, here’s how we can see it now vs. how we were able to see it 14 years ago
Remember when we used to call Pluto a planet back in school? Well, it all changed back in 2006 when it was reclassified as a dwarf instead of a planet.
An artist tried to imagine how Rosetta’s Comet (67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko) would look compared to downtown LA. That’s a big space rock, isn’t it?
If you thought Jupiter was big, it has nothing on the Sun
The Sun has a surface area of 6.09×1012 km2 – that’s as big as 12,000 Earths! Here are some other fun facts:
- The light from the Sun takes 8 min and 19 s to reach Earth
- The Sun is made up of 73.46% Hydrogen, 24.85% Helium and small traces of Oxygen, Carbon and other elements
- The Sun turns 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second, resulting in 4 million tons of matter being converted into energy every second
Here’s how Earth looks from the surface of the Moon
And here’s how it looks from Mars
…and from behind Saturn’s rings – looks kind of small, doesn’t it?
Earth looks no bigger than a grain of salt from 2.9 billion miles away, just beyond Neptune
Here’s how Earth looks compared to the Sun
Although it looks like a little speck when seen from the surface of Mars
Here’s another fun fact – there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth
This means that there are much bigger stars than our sun out there. For example, here’s the Sun compared to VY Canis Majoris
If placed in the center of our solar system, VY Canis Majoris would almost reach the orbit of Saturn
If we scaled the Sun down to the size of a white blood cell, the Milky Way would be the just as big as the continental United States
Suddenly the Earth doesn’t seem that big anymore
Looking up at the night sky, you can see thousands of stars and they’re just a fraction of the numerous stars in the universe
Just in case you thought Milky Way is huge, here how it looks next to IC 1101, located 1.04 billion light-years away
Here’s a photo of the thousands of galaxies around us take by the Hubble Space Telescope
Most of them are so far away, we might never get to visit them – like UDF 423, for example, that’s located 7.7 billion light-years away
All of the stars in the night sky are just a tiny part of the whole universe
And one last thing – black holes. Here’s how one looks compared to Earth’s orbit – now that’s pretty terrifying
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