Sirius....

[Caz]

.....I have to say this star is at its best when theres lots of atmospheric (thats a big word for me this time of night.. ?) turbulence, it twinkles like theres no tomorrow, and the colours are breathtaking..... Plus its the only star I managed to see through the clouds..... but its always worth a look !!!

[Jamie]

If you can imagine looking at a big spinning diamond with a light shining behind it

thats the only description i can give in it visually.

Stunning sight.

[GazOC]

Caz,

The red star the top left of Orion (Betelguese) is bigg enough to contain the Earths orbit around the Sun!

[col]

Its the distances involved that get me, its hard to imagine

[GazOC]

I don't think you can imagine them, well I can't anyway! When you think it takes light 4-odd years for light to get to the NEAREST star...... :?

[col]

im not sure where i heard it , some time ago, someone said if your nose is the earth and your fist the sun, where would the nearest star be? it was london according to the tale, is this a good representation ??

[col]

good point

[GazOC]

It would also depend on which city you were in and how far fron London it was.

[col]

never thought of that, straight to the point eh gaz

[col]

think it was in darlington, at patrick moores show at the civic theatre a few years ago,cant be certain, been racking my brain trying to remember. :?

[GazOC]

I remember one about if you are stood in London then the nearest star is Johanasburg, I seem to recall having read that somewhere.......dunno why it's stuck in my head though.....

[col]

interesting thought though, sort of helps with distance , a little bit ,

[The Warthog]

Caz,

The red star the top left of Orion (Betelguese) is bigg enough to contain the Earths orbit around the Sun!

Ummmmm...I knew it was big...but not that big.... :shock:

Actually, I was told that Mars would be rolling around the surface of Betelgeuse. That's really bigg!

[The Warthog]

I helped my son put together a presentation on this when he was in school. We used a 12" ball to represent the earth, and a 3" ball to represent the moon, then we had the kids guess how far away the small ball had to be from the big ball. It was the length of the classroom. He then used the 12" ball as the sun, and after some showmanship, presented a dressmaker's pin as the earth (1/8th inch head.) He wanted to carry the pin 90' down the hallway to show the relative distance, but the teacher wouldn't let him...

[daz]

I helped my son put together a presentation on this when he was in school. We used a 12" ball to represent the earth, and a 3" ball to represent the moon, then we had the kids guess how far away the small ball had to be from the big ball. It was the length of the classroom. He then used the 12" ball as the sun, and after some showmanship, presented a dressmaker's pin as the earth (1/8th inch head.) He wanted to carry the pin 90' down the hallway to show the relative distance, but the teacher wouldn't let him...

Excellent story WH!!!

Things like this really grab people's imaginations, I guess because they can see the objects and the relative distances! There is an outdoor orrery somewhere in the UK that has the planets dotted throughout the neighbouring village - can't remember the name of it now, which is a touch annoying!!!

[Astroman]

Ok, the scale thing has gotten out of hand.

I built a scale model of the solar system in my yard. The Sun is about the size of an American dime, (1.8cm). Mercury is .9 meters away, Venus 1.8 meters, Earth 2.7 meters and so on. Pluto averages about 150 meters. The nearest star is roughly 615 kilometers away. Jupiter would be about the size of a grain of salt.

In real terms, the Sun is 1.43 million kilometers in diameter. Earth is 13,200 Km in diameter. Earth's orbit about the Sun is 155,000,000 Km radius. You can fit 109 Earths across the equator of the Sun.