Solar System Scale

True distances and sizes of planets in perspective

The solar system is overwhelmingly empty space. The Sun contains 99.86% of the system's mass. If the Sun were a basketball (24 cm diameter), Earth would be a 2 mm peppercorn 26 meters away, and Jupiter would be a 2.5 cm marble 135 meters away. Neptune would be over 770 meters away. The planets' sizes span 4 orders of magnitude: Mercury (4,879 km) to Jupiter (139,820 km). Distances span even more: Mercury at 0.39 AU to Neptune at 30.07 AU. One AU is about 150 million km. Light takes 4.2 hours to reach Neptune from the Sun.