Ready Jet Go
Amy Mainzer Explains How Big Is the Solar System
Clip: Season 1 | 1m 31sVideo has Closed Captions
Amy Mainzer uses a soccer field to explain the distance of the planets to the sun.
Amy Mainzer uses a soccer field to explain the distance of the planets to the sun.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Ready Jet Go
Amy Mainzer Explains How Big Is the Solar System
Clip: Season 1 | 1m 31sVideo has Closed Captions
Amy Mainzer uses a soccer field to explain the distance of the planets to the sun.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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and, of course, you should never look directly at the Sun, because it's so bright, it could burn your eyes.
Hi, I'm astronomer Amy Mainzer.
If I set the Sun down on the end line of this soccer field, we can start to get an idea of just how huge our solar system is.
Let's start with the Earth.
The Earth is incredibly far away from the Sun.
It's 93 million miles away.
That's farther than you would ever drive in your life, and we call that distance one astronomical unit, or one AU.
Of course, the Earth isn't really this big compared to the Sun.
It's really more like the size of this dime here or even a little smaller than that.
Now, let's go to the most distant planet in the solar system, Neptune.
[lively music] ♪ ♪ This is Neptune.
It's the most distant planet in the solar system.
It orbits the Sun about 30 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or 30 AU away.
And it orbits all the way out here, in the coldest, darkest outer reaches of the solar system.
Uranus is 19.2.
Saturn is 9.6.
Jupiter: 5.2 AU from the Sun.
Mars is 1 1/2 AU away from the Sun.
So the next time you're running around the soccer field, just pretend you're going from planet to planet, and keep in mind just how huge our solar system really is.
♪ ♪ Sol!
Whoop!
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