How big is the solar system?

The solar system is huge and rarely shown at scale.

This will take a while.

If you feel bored, how about some fun facts along the way about the solar system?

The Solar System formed around 4.6 billion years ago.

The Sun contains 99.86% of the Solar System's known mass.

Mercury is the smallest planet of the Solar System.

Your weight on Mercury would be 38% of your weight on Earth.

A day on the surface of Mercury lasts 176 Earth days. A year on Mercury takes 88 Earth days.

Even though Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, its surface can still be extremely cold. The temperature during the day can reach 450 °C, but at night, temperatures can get as low as minus -170 °C. That fluctuation equals a temperature swing of more than 600 °C, the largest of any planet in the solar system.

Venus is the second brightest natural object in the sky. The planet has an apparent magnitude of -3.8 to -4.6, which makes it visible on a bright, clear day. The Moon is the only other natural object that is brighter.

One day on Venus is longer than one year. Due to the slow rotation on its axis, it takes 243 Earth-days to complete one rotation. Whereas the orbit of the planet takes 225 Earth-days - making one year on Venus is shorter than making one day on Venus.

Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system with an average surface temperature of 462 °C (863 °F). Also, Venus doesn't tilt on its axis which means there are no seasons either. The atmosphere is a dense 96.5% carbon dioxide which traps heat and caused the greenhouse effect which evaporated any water sources billions of years ago.

The atmospheric pressure of Venus is 92 times stronger than Earth's. This means that any small asteroids entering the atmosphere of Venus are crushed by the immense pressure, which is why there are no small surface craters on the planet. This pressure is equivalent to being around 1,000 km under Earth's oceans.

Earth, our home planet, is a world unlike any other. The third planet from the sun, Earth is the only place in the known universe confirmed to host life.

The Earth's rotation is gradually slowing. This deceleration is happening almost imperceptibly, at approximately 17 milliseconds per hundred years, although the rate at which it occurs is not perfectly uniform. This has the effect of lengthening our days, but it happens so slowly that it could be as much as 140 million years before the length of a day will have increased to 25 hours.

The Earth is the densest planet in the Solar System. This varies according to the part of the planet; for example, the metallic core is denser than the crust. The average density of the Earth is approximately 5.52 grams per cubic centimetre.

When astronauts first went into the space, they looked back at the Earth with human eyes for the first time, and called our home the Blue Planet. And it's no surprise. 70% of our planet is covered with oceans. The remaining 30% is the solid ground, rising above sea level.

Mars and Earth have approximately the same landmass. Even though Mars has only 15% of the Earth's volume and just over 10% of the Earth's mass, around two thirds of the Earth's surface is covered in water. Martian surface gravity is only 37% of the Earth's (meaning you could leap nearly three times higher on Mars).

Mars is home to the tallest mountain in the solar system. Olympus Mons, a shield volcano, is 21km high and 600km in diameter. Despite having formed over billions of years, evidence from volcanic lava flows is so recent many scientists believe it could still be active.

On Mars the Sun appears about half the size as it does on Earth. At the closest point to the Sun, the Martian southern hemisphere leans towards the Sun, causing a short, intensely hot summer, while the northern hemisphere endures a brief, cold winter: at its farthest point from the Sun, the Martian northern hemisphere leans towards the Sun, causing a long, mild summer, while the southern hemisphere endures a lengthy, cold winter.

Pieces of Mars have fallen to Earth. Scientists have found tiny traces of Martian atmosphere within meteorites violently ejected from Mars, then orbiting the solar system amongst galactic debris for millions of years, before crash landing on Earth. This allowed scientists to begin studying Mars prior to launching space missions.

There are signs of liquid water on Mars. For years Mars has been known to have water in the form of ice. The first signs of trickling water are dark stripes or stains on crater wall and cliffs seen in satellite images. Due to Mars' atmosphere this water would have to be salty to prevent it from freezing or vaporising.

One day Mars will have a ring. In the next 20-40 million years Mars' largest moon Phobos will be torn apart by gravitational forces leading to the creation of a ring that could last up to 100 million years.

Between Mars and Jupiter, there is region with asteroids. This region is called Asteroid Belt.

Asteroid Belt objects are made of rock and stone. Some are solid objects, while others are orbiting “rubble piles”. The Asteroid Belt contains billions and billions of asteroids.

We know of at least 7,000 asteroids. The Asteroid Belt may contain many objects, but they are spread out over a huge area of space. This has allowed spacecraft to move through this region without hitting anything.

The formation of Jupiter disrupted the formation of any worlds in the Asteroid Belt region by scattering asteroids away. This caused them to collide and break into smaller pieces. Gravitational influences can move asteroids out of the Belt.

The Asteroid Belt is often referred to as the “Main Belt” to distinguish it from other groups of asteroids such as the Lagrangians and Centaurs.

The four largest asteroids in the belt are Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. They contain half the mass of the entire belt. The rest of the mass is contained in countless smaller bodies. There was a theory once that if you combined all the asteroids they would make up the missing “Fifth” rocky planet. Planetary scientists estimate that if you could put all that material together that exists there today, it would make a tiny world smaller than Earth's moon.

It's no secret that Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. But this description really doesn't do it justice. For one, the mass of Jupiter is 318 times as massive as the Earth. In fact, Jupiter is 2.5 times more massive than all of the other planets in the Solar System combined. But here's the really interesting thing…

For all its size and mass, Jupiter sure moves quickly. In fact, with an rotational velocity of 12.6 km/s or 45,300 km/h, the planet only takes about 10 hours to complete a full rotation on its axis. And because it's spinning so rapidly, the planet has flattened out at the poles a little and is bulging at its equator. In fact, points on Jupiter's equator are more than 4,600 km further from the center than the poles. Or to put it another way, the planet's polar radius measures to 66,854 ± 10 km (or 10.517 that of Earth's), while its diameter at the equator is 71,492 ± 4 km (or 11.209 that of Earth's).

This rapid rotation also helps generate Jupiter's powerful magnetic fields, and contribute to the dangerous radiation surrounding it.

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is one of its most familiar features. This persistent anticyclonic storm, which is located south of its equator, measures between 24,000 km in diameter and 12-14,000 km in height. As such, it is large enough to contain two or three planets the size of Earth's diameter. And the spot has been around for at least 350 years, since it was spotted as far back as the 17th century.

The Great Red Spot was first identified in 1665 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini. By the 20th century, astronomers began to theorize that it was a storm, one which was created by Jupiter's turbulent and fast-moving atmosphere. These theories were confirmed by the Voyager 1 mission, which observed the Giant Red Spot up close in March of 1979 during its flyby of the planet. However, it appears to have been shrinking since that time.

Based on Cassini's observations, the size was estimated to be 40,000 km in the 17th century, which was almost twice as large as it is now. Astronomers do not know if or when it will ever disappear entirely, but they are relatively sure that another one will emerge somewhere else on the planet.

Jupiter has a ring system. Jupiter's were the third set to be discovered (after the other two), due to the fact that they are particularly faint. Jupiter's rings consist of three main segments - an inner torus of particles known as the halo, a relatively bright main ring, and an outer gossamer ring.

As of the penning of this article, Jupiter has a 67 confirmed and named satellites. However, it is estimated that the planet has over 200 natural satellites orbiting it. Almost all of them are less than 10 kilometers in diameter, and were only discovered after 1975, when the first spacecraft (Pioneer 10) arrived at Jupiter. However, it also has four major moons, which are collectively known as the Galilean Moons (after their discovered Galileo Galilei). These are, in order of distance from Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. These moons are some of the largest in the Solar System, with Ganymede being the largest, measuring 5262 km in diameter.

Jupiter is the third brightest object in the Solar System, after Venus and the Moon. Chances are, you saw Jupiter in the sky, and had no idea that's what you were seeing. And here at Universe Today, we are in the habit of letting readers know when the best opportunities for spotting Jupiter in the night sky are.

Chances are, if you see a really bright star high in the sky, then you're looking at Jupiter. Get your hands on a pair of binoculars, and if you know someone with a telescope, that's even better. Using even modest magnification, you might even spot small specks of light orbiting it, which are its Galilean Moons. Just think, you'll be seeing precisely what Galileo did when he gazed at the planet in 1610.

How big is the solar system?

Well quite big.