How big is the Sun compared to a marble?

[the lemming]

I have a pet project but I'm not sure how I'd go about it. Bit of a thicko with maths.

Would anybody be able to tell me the scale of the Sun compared to a child's marble, if it was for example 13mm diameter?

I could then try and work out how far away the earth would be making a simple map on the ground by trying to work out the scale of 150,000,000km from the Sun in my marble scale.

 

Cheers muchly

[the lemming]

4 minutes ago, the lemming said:

I have a pet project but I'm not sure how I'd go about it. Bit of a thicko with maths.

Would anybody be able to tell me the scale of the Sun compared to a child's marble, if it was for example 13mm diameter?

I could then try and work out how far away the earth would be making a simple map on the ground by trying to work out the scale of 150,000,000km from the Sun in my marble scale.

 

Cheers muchly

Edit

 

To make lifer more easy for me, please make the marble a more easy 10mm.

Sorry

[josefk]

Unless my maths is super shonky i believe a 13mm marble representing the sun should be 138cm away from a XXmm (not worked it out) sphere representing the earth...

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

The diameter of the sun is about 1.3927 million km. assuming a marble 13.927 mm in diameter, the sun is one hundred million (100,000,000) times larger

[josefk]

if a 10mm marble for the sun then it would be 106cm away from a less than 0.1mm "marble" for the earth. You may want to start with a bigger marble 🙂

[josefk]

for workings:

sun "marble" diameter x 106 = distance to the earth

sun "marble" diameter / 109 = diameter of the earth "marble"

Cheers

[AstroMuni]

7 hours ago, the lemming said:

I could then try and work out how far away the earth would be making a simple map on the ground by trying to work out the scale of 150,000,000km from the Sun in my marble scale.

If you are trying to explain the scale of our solar system this short video does it quite well. EDIT: Replaced video with one from YouTube as it has more info.

 

 

 

Edited February 3, 2023 by AstroMuni

[Mick H]

This is also a good solar system compare:

 

Edited February 3, 2023 by Mick H

[the lemming]

4 hours ago, AstroMuni said:

If you are trying to explain the scale of our solar system this short video does it quite well. EDIT: Replaced video with one from YouTube as it has more info.

 

 

 

That was really enjoyable

 

Cheers

[david_taurus83]

Just tried to work all this out on the calculator for fun. Assuming approximate sizes and distances on Sky Safari are correct:

A 10mm diameter Sun would be 1.060m away and the earth would be a piddly 0.009mm in size, roughly 3 camera pixels wide!

If we reverse the scale and make the earth 10mm wide, then the Sun would be 1.090m wide and be 115.631m away.

To put into scale the vastness of space itself, if the sun was 10mm wide, then our nearest cosmic neighbour, Alpha Centauri, would still be 296.542km away! 🤯

That's like placing a marble sized Sun in London city centre and travelling all the way to Liverpool to get to the 3 marbles that make up Alpha Centauri!

[Sunshine]

A marble compared to the sun!? I wouldn’t know where to start, the difference in size here would be like comparing a grain of sand and the earth itself. 

[Gfamily]

25 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Just tried to work all this out on the calculator for fun. Assuming approximate sizes and distances on Sky Safari are correct:

A 10mm diameter Sun would be 1.060m away and the earth would be a piddly 0.009mm in size, roughly 3 camera pixels wide!

If we reverse the scale and make the earth 10mm wide, then the Sun would be 1.090m wide and be 115.631m away.

 I'm not really trying to be picky, but it's a personal bugbear of mine, but if you are "assuming approximate distances..."why are you putting the distance accurate to 1mm over 100+ metres?   

Being less picky (and anyone can feel free to be picky about me in turn  ) I have an online calculator that allows the Solar System to be scaled as you wish. 

There are two separate scalings involved (not directly related to each other) but if you choose the size you want for the Sun or any planet) it'll give you the approximate size for the other components of the Solar System

Similarly, if you give it a scale distance for any planet from the Sun, it'll give you the scale distances of all the others,  I made this up when I was making a scale solar system for a Cub Scout group we were visiting.

I tend to reset it to a 10cm size Jupiter (the largest polystyrene ball we could easily get) at a distance of 2.5 metres (we have a 15metre tape measure which is enough to include Neptune)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GoGmffEo6rH0E4C0O5qQ-nLCOocw3P8YzHN6r1oW3RQ/edit?usp=sharing 

Edited February 4, 2023 by Gfamily

[david_taurus83]

1 hour ago, Gfamily said:

 I'm not really trying to be picky, but it's a personal bugbear of mine, but if you are "assuming approximate distances..."why are you putting the distance accurate to 1mm over 100+ metres?   

I did say if the distances quoted by Skysafari were correct..

And given the scale of the objects we are talking about, in my mind, the millimetre matters!

[Gfamily]

6 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

I did say if the distances quoted by Skysafari were correct..

And given the scale of the objects we are talking about, in my mind, the millimetre matters!

Not "1 part in 100,000" matters

[david_taurus83]

Geez, who knew a bit of fun thread could turn so pedantic.

[Gfamily]

1 minute ago, david_taurus83 said:

Geez, who knew a bit of fun thread could turn so pedantic.

I'm sorry, it's just me 😂

[davehowat]

The answer would be very big ,,, 😊 ps all I know is that it would still be raining in Scotland ,so little chance off seeing a marble let alone the sun ...pps I jest ..

[sagittariancat]

The Sun is approximately 865,000 miles in diameter, while a child's marble with a diameter of 13mm is 0.013 meters. This means that the Sun is approximately 6,700,000,000 times larger than a 13mm marble.

[Zermelo]

A mathematician might answer that the marble can be chopped up and reassembled so that it's just as large as the sun, with the help of an (apparently innocuous) assumption, and a very subtle knife.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach–Tarski_paradox