Amazing composite images show how Earth matches up to the rest of the Solar System
The picture above shows our planet and the Sun - you could fit 109 Earths across the disk of the Sun and its volume is equal to 1,300,000 Earths
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Your support makes all the difference.“Space is big,” cautioned Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
Truer words have never been spoken and the images below prove why. Even when we begin to consider something that's massive to us (the Solar System) it's still overwhelmingly tiny on a truly cosmic scale.
Our little corner of the Universe – one star, eight planets – is one of roughly 30 billion solar systems in the Milky Way, which itself is just one of 100 billion galaxies in the observerable Universe. It can be pretty impossible to get your head around.
But still, these images are a start. Mocked up by Lancashire-based amateur astronomer John Brady for his website Astronomy Central, they show how various planetary bodies and geographical features near us match up to the Earth, with the data and images taken from Nasa.
Speaking toThe Independent, Brady said: “A lot of people are completely astounded when they realise just how huge the Sun is for example. It’s exactly the same size as the Moon as we see it in the sky but 400 times further away. Relatively small solar features can easily be many times the size of planet Earth."
Here's a couple of images - but check out the full gallery below:
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