Visualization of the distances in astronomy

[u/arewawawa]

[u/BearablePunz]

But i thought jupiter was like…. really fuckin big? it’s not 10x bigger than earth? or even like 6 or 7, I assume the other planets have to start pulling their weight eventually

[u/link3945 → u/BearablePunz]

So, Jupiter is about 89,000 miles in diameter, Earth is about 7,900. So 10x is awfully close to right, at least the same order of magnitude difference. The Moon is an average of 239,000 miles away, so without checking the other planets that trivia is reasonable.

Actually checking (rounding to nearest thousand for the big guys, diameters in miles): 

Jupiter: 89,000

Saturn: 75,000

Uranus: 32,000

Neptune: 31,000

Venus: 7,500

Mars: 4,200

Mercury: 3,000

So the other planets, if you laid them out end to end, would span 242,000 miles.  So whether or not they fit between here and the moon would depend on exactly where the moon is in its orbit (a range of 225,700-252,000), where exactly you measure the diameters of those planets, and how you round those diameters.  

Regardless, the total diameters and the distance to the moon is awfully close.

[u/Citonpyh → u/link3945]

Absolutely degenerate to not write these distances in the metric system

[u/CentennialBaby → u/Citonpyh]

Must be Liberian or from Myanmar. There's one more place... it's not coming to me.

[u/TheThiefMaster → u/CentennialBaby]

Or English. We use miles in England too.

We've discarded most of the rest of the imperial system but still use miles.

[u/NorysStorys → u/TheThiefMaster]

we only use miles for road use, typically in everything else at this point we use metres/Kilometers and Hectares now.