It's sometimes hard to grasp the sheer vastness of space and the tiny size of our little blue planet in the cosmos. So imagine that we are taking a journey across the Solar System from the Sun to Neptune and beyond. Now imagine that journey is like going from Dublin to Galway.
We start at O'Connell Bridge in Dublin. At this scale the Sun is a large sphere measuring a whopping 57.7 metres in diameter (for comparison Liberty Hall is 59.4 metres tall).
We travel down the quays 2.4km before we come to the first planet in the Solar System. This is Mercury which on this scale is just outside Heuston Station. Here Mercury is a small sphere measuring just 20cm in diameter, somewhat smaller than a football.
A further 2km along the road we come to Venus. Here Venus is a sphere measuring around the size of a small beachball at 50cm in diameter.
Next up is home, Earth which is slightly larger than Venus coming in at just shy of 53cm in diameter. The Moon, measuring 14cm in diameter, orbits Earth 16 metres away.
Next up is Mars which is nearly 3.5km further out the road. It is just at the exit for the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre measuring 28 cm in diameter the same size as a regular football.
Next we come to Ceres the first of the dwarf planets. On this scale Ceres is located nearly 8km from Mars just outside Leixlip a little bigger than a golf ball.
Now things get BIG! A full 15.5km from Ceres is Jupiter just next to the M4 toll plaza coming in at nearly 5.9 metres in diameter. The largest planet is nearly as big as a house at this scale.
Now we have to travel for nearly another 27km before we come to our next planet, Saturn which lies near Kinnegad. It comes in somewhat smaller than Jupiter at 4.8m in diameter.
Now we have to travel nearly 59km(!) before we reach our next planet, the pale blue remote world of Uranus. It lies on the Galway side of Athlone and is a sphere measuring around 1.9 metres in diameter. Distances from here on continue to get bigger and bigger. It already takes light 3 hours to get here from the Sun
We have to travel another 67 km to reach the last major planet in the Solar system, Neptune, located in the middle of Eyre Square, Galway and measuring just under 1.9m in diameter.
Pluto is 60 km beyond Neptune just outside Clifden and is the next dwarf planet. Pluto is just a bit bigger than a tennis ball at this scale.
The largest dwarf planet, Eris, is 160 km off the west coast and is just slightly larger than Pluto. There's a cosy little bar there and they do a great pint.
The most distant man made object from Earth lies 515km off the west coast. Voyager 1 is currently at 131 AU from Earth. It takes radio signals 38 hours to travel one way from Earth to Voyager 1. It is still operating and sending back information to us over 40 years after its launch in 1977.
2,950km from the west coast near to Nova Scotia we come to Sedna. This is one of the most distant known objects in the Solar System and at this scale is smaller than a golf ball!
Now for the scary part. At this scale the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is 1,657,000 km away, over 4 times the full-scale distance from the Earth to the Moon!!
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Thanks to namloc1980 for his help in putting this cache together essentially the graphics and working out the relevant sizes and distances
Congratulations to Bohstom for FTF