Figure 1-4: The Sun and Planets to Scale This montage of images from various spacecraft and ground-based telescopes shows the relative sizes of the planets and the Sun. The Sun is so large compared to the planets that only a portion of it fits into this illustration. The distances from the Sun to each planet are not shown to scale; the actual distance from the Sun to Earth, for instance, is 12,000 times greater than Earth’s diameter.
(Calvin J. Hamilton and NASA/JPL)