The sun, planets and moon are a common sight in science textbooks, but actually seeing this formation to scale in a real location, isn’t. Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet, who are both filmmakers, decided to build the solar system to scale on the dry bed of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, starting with the Earth as the size of a marble. In the end, they need to use approximately 7 miles (11.2km) to squeeze in the orbit of the outermost planet, Neptune, and glass spheres lit by LEDs as well as GPS calculations were used to accurately map out the solar system. Continue reading for another mind-bending video about the solar system.
The Solar System also contains smaller objects. Beyond Neptune’s orbit lie the Kuiper belt and scattered disc, populations of trans-Neptunian objects composed mostly of ices, and beyond them a newly discovered population of sednoids. Within these populations are several dozen to possibly tens of thousands of objects large enough to have been rounded by their own gravity. Such objects are categorized as dwarf planets. Identified dwarf planets include the asteroid Ceres and the trans-Neptunian objects Pluto and Eris.
