Space-Facts: The planets, to scale

A recurring favourite theme here on Urban Astronomer is the utterly mind-breaking size of the Solar System. Everything is just so big, and so far apart that our brains, designed to handle distances no further than the horizon, simply can't understand the scale. What we are good at, though, is coming up with new and inventive ways to try and reduce the numbers into some sort of analogy or illustration that we can cope with. Chris Jones from space-facts.com recently contacted me to let me know of his own efforts in this regard: A diagram overlaying all eight planets of The Solar System onto Jupiter, to show their relative size. I've attached a copy to the left - click to visit the source page. I think it gets the message across quite well!