English: This image is unique in that it shows both the sizes and distances of the Solar System to scale.

It shows that if the Sun-Neptune distance of the Solar System were scaled down to the 100-yard length of a football field (yellow lines point to goal line to goal line span, roughly 13 meters shorter than a standard soccer, or Association football field), then the Sun and eight planets would be small enough to hold in the palm of a person's hand. The inset shows all 9 objects upclose to just one yard, and this is done to show that typical Solar System depictions are grossly distorted by several orders of magnitude. (To view this image without this inset nor with any markings, click here.)

SIZES:
At this scale, the Sun (at 2.826 cm) is about two-thirds the diameter of a golf ball (4.268 cm).
All four gas/ice giants are smaller than a bb pellet (4.496 mm), with...
- Jupiter (at 2.903 mm) being about two-thirds the diameter of a bb,
- Saturn (at 2.447 mm) being slightly over half the diameter of a bb (the visible rings of Saturn, at 5.554 mm in diameter, are larger than the bb's width),
- Uranus (at 1.038 mm) and Neptune (at 1.006 mm) being roughly one-quarter the diameter of a bb.

All four terrestrial planets are smaller than the ball contained at the tip of a ball-point pen (1 mm medium point shown), with...
- Earth (at 0.2587 mm) and Venus (at 0.2458 mm) being roughly one-quarter of this ball-point's diameter,
- Mercury (at 0.09907 mm) and Mars (at 0.1379 mm) being on the order of one-tenth of this ball-point's diameter.

Moons are not represented in this image, but the following is info for the largest moons in the Solar System...
- There are two moons slightly larger than the smallest planet Mercury: Ganymede with a diameter 7.83% wider, and Titan at 5.53% wider.
- There are two moons smaller than Mercury, but larger than Earth's moon: Callisto at 1.52% and Io at 25.4% narrower than Mercury.
- There are two moons smaller than Earth's moon, but larger than Pluto: Europa at 9.72% and Triton at 22.2% narrower than Earth's moon.

Within the orbit of Pluto, all other objects in the Solar System are significantly smaller than Pluto. And these sub-planetary objects are extremely small at this scale, with...
- Dwarf planets Ceres at < 0.02 mm and Pluto < 0.05 mm. At less than 50 microns in diameter, the largest of the dwarf planets scale down to the size of specks of dust.
- Hanging from the marker for Ceres ("C") is a graph that shows the orbit distribution for the asteroid belt. Sizes of these objects are extremely small. (A very small bracket is superimposed onto this blue graph. The upper end indicates 100 objects, and the lower end is for 200 objects in this inverted y-axis of the graph.)

DISTANCES:
For distances, the Sun is at one goal line, with Neptune at the opposite goal line (100 yards away). The distances for the other planets are roughly...
- Mercury at the 1 yard line,
- Venus at the 2 yard line,
- Earth at the 3 yard line,
- Mars at the 5 yard line, (with these first four distances having some similarity to the Fibonacci sequence)
- Jupiter at the 17 yard line,
- Saturn at the 32 yard line, and
- Uranus at the 64 yard line (the more general pattern for planet orbit distances has been studied as the Titius–Bode law).

Jupiter along with all the terrestrial planets are located well within the "red zone", to use a term from American football. The exact scale factor is 49,250,000,000-to-1. Precise numbers for the mean orbit distances of the planets as a percent of Neptune's mean distance are (Mercury through Neptune respectively): 1.287%, 2.402%, 3.323%, 5.063%, 17.292%, 31.712%, 63.786%, and 100%. Vertical lines (in white) point to the exact locations where the bodies are found (abbreviating to just the first initial). At the top of each bar is a horizontal line indicating the eccentricity of each orbit, with the 'T' showing the closest and furthest away from the Sun it gets (perihelion and aphelion). At the bottom of each of these are a pair of black lines which likewise show the perihelion and aphelion, but the pair is split to also show how high above and below the field the orbit goes. So this pair of lines simultaneously shows the orbit inclination and eccentricity. This defines a rectangular box that when swept around the Sun forms a "washer" of perfect cylindrical shape within which the orbit of the body will be contained. The orbit of Ceres ("C") has an inclination greater than any planet. And Pluto ("P") has an even bigger inclination, at 15.6° off of the invariable plane (see 3RD DIMENSION section below). Pluto's tilt takes its orbit far below the level of the field with the point indicated near the bottom right of the image, and its orbit goes well above the boundary of this image so is not indicated. Pluto's orbit is located 130 yards away from the Sun, so it's horizontal eccentricity line is a pointer, while showing how the perihelion of Pluto's orbit is actually closer to the Sun than Neptune's.

"The Pocket Solar System" (video) is a demonstration that shows the distance relationships as a harmonic doubling, with Uranus being half the distance between the Sun and Pluto, with Saturn being half of that, Jupiter's distance half again, the Asteroid Belt, Mars, Venus and Mercury being further higher/closer "octaves". The Earth and Neptune are exceptions to this distance-doubling pattern, yet are still found at regular divisions of the Sun-Pluto distance. This doubling pattern fits very closely within one or two yards from the exact average distances that these planets and minor planets are found on the football field:

0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128   (corresponding to the Sun, Mercury, Venus, [ ], Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, [ ], Pluto).

This distance-doubling pattern covers all of the planets except for the Earth and Neptune. The Earth is at 3, and Neptune is at 96 according to this approximation. (And this sequence scales the Sun-Neptune distance to 96, which is close to the 0-to-100 scaling used in the football field image). Given as fractions of the Sun-Pluto distance, the full sequence becomes:

0, 1/128, 1/64, 3/128, 1/32, 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 1   (corresponding to the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto).

See orbital resonance for more about harmonic relationships in celestial dynamics.

SPEED OF LIGHT:
A common unit of measurement in astronomy is the light year. Light travels 63,241.077 AU in 365.25 days. In one day, light travels 137.1446 AU. Therefore it travels the 30.1 AU Sun-Neptune distance 1/5.75 days. 0.1738 days is 4.1727 "light-hours". In other words, light from the Sun reaches Neptune in 4 hours 10 minutes 21.87 seconds. Scaling this Solar System distance to a football field does nothing to alter time, but it does scale the speed. So the speed of light (186,282 miles per second, or 670.6 million miles per hour) slows all the way down to 0.0136 miles per hour (which is 23.965 yards per hour, or 26.2085 meters per hour) at this scale of a football field. This is also 0.133 ft/min, or 1.6 inches/min, so it is easy for an ant to exceed this scaled down speed of light. Usain Bolt's world record 100m speed of 9.58s (23.35 mph or 37.578 km/h) scales to nearly 1,717 times the speed of light for this Solar System football field. The relationship between speed and distance is:

Distance = Rate x Time

The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant rate, so it can be useful for measuring large distances. In the Solar System, here is the time it takes for light from the Sun to reach:^[1]

Light-distance from Sun
——————————————————————————————————————————————
Mercury     193.0 seconds = 3min 13sec ≈ 3¼min
Venus       360.0 seconds = 6min
Earth       499.0 seconds = 8min 19sec ≈ 8⅓min
Mars        759.9 seconds = 12min 39.9sec ≈ 12⅔min
Ceres      1381.0 seconds = 23min 1sec ≈ 23min

Jupiter    2595.0 seconds = 43min 15sec = 43¼min
Saturn     4759.0 seconds = 1hr 19min 19sec ≈ 1⅓hrs
Uranus     9575.0 seconds = 2hrs 39min 35sec ≈ 2⅔hrs
Neptune   14998.0 seconds = 4hrs 9min 58sec ≈ 4⅙hrs
Pluto     19680.0 seconds = 5hrs 28min 0sec ≈ 5½hrs
——————————————————————————————————————————————

EMPTINESS:
While the field itself may seem like vast emptiness, this only represents one section of the solar system as the planets orbit all the way around the Sun. And this representation of the ecliptic plane is only the one slice where such objects are found, while the entire three-dimensional volume includes the vast emptiness above and below this plane. The most distant probe ever sent from the Earth is Voyager 1. On Aug 25, 2012, at a distance of 121 AU, it's sensors detected a transition across the heliopause and it is now understood to be in interstellar space. At the scale of this image, that transition happened at a distance of 402 yards away from the Sun (another 3 football field lengths away). This probe, however, has not departed the entire Solar System as a comprehensive definition extends far beyond Neptune, Pluto and other TNOs. The inner edge of the main part of the Oort Cloud could be as close as 1,000 AU from the Sun, with the outer edge estimated to extend to around 100,000 AU. At this football field scale, those limits of the Oort Cloud range from nearly two-thirds of a mile (1.01 km) out to 188.8 miles (303.8 km).

3RD DIMENSION:
The orbits of each planet have a slight inclination to the plane represented by the field, so their height above or below this plane will vary. One way this plane can be defined is simply by using the orbital plane of the Earth as the reference for the other planets. This is referred to as the "ecliptic plane". A less arbitrary method is to calculate the "invariable plane" as being the plane established by the total angular momentum of all known bodies that comprise the Solar System. (Yet another method is to compare the orbital planes with the plane defined by the rotation of the Sun, 7.25° to the ecliptic.) The following table shows the inclinations of the planets along with their scaled height as the maximum excursion above and below the football field in feet or inches:

———————————————————————————————————————————
         Planet Inclination and
Scaled Maximum Height Above/Below The Field
———————————————————————————————————————————
         Ecliptic Plane  Invariable Plane
———————————————————————————————————————————
Mercury  7.01°           6.34°
         0.475'=5.703"   0.426'=5.116"
———————————————————————————————————————————
Venus    3.39°           2.19°
         0.426'=5.113"   0.275'=3.304"
———————————————————————————————————————————
Earth    ----            1.57°
         0               0.273'=3.278"
———————————————————————————————————————————
Mars     1.85°           1.67°
         0.490'=5.884"   0.443'=5.312"
———————————————————————————————————————————
Jupiter  1.31°           0.32°
         1.186'=14.232"  0.290'=3.477"
———————————————————————————————————————————
Saturn   2.49°           0.93°
         4.133'=49.598"  1.544'=18.530"
———————————————————————————————————————————
Uranus   0.77°           1.02°
         2.572'=30.859"  3.406'=40.877"
———————————————————————————————————————————
Neptune  1.77°           0.72°
         9.266'=111.195" 3.770'=45.238"
———————————————————————————————————————————
The largest excursion of any of the planets is by Neptune, reaching at most 9.266 feet (2.824 meters) above or below the football field (with the field defined as the ecliptic plane).  All other planets remain much closer to the common plane.  In the invariable plane, the maximum height is again by Neptune reaching up to 3.77 feet (1.15 meters) which is shorter than the height of an average 7-year old child.

For an alternate diagram of the solar system scaled to a football field,
see:

Solar System scaled to a football field.png