To Scale: THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Why Hacker News recommends it
Shared as the best visceral demonstration of solar system scale.
What it is
A short film in which friends build the first true-to-scale model of the solar system, with full planetary orbits, on a Nevada dry lakebed. It conveys the real distances and sizes involved.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2015 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends silasdb · 2025-06 · on “If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)”
This is a great website—it reminds me of To Scale: The Solar System [1], a mini-documentary where people attempt to build a true-to-scale model of the Solar System. It makes me feel like a tiny speck of dust, floating in the vastness of nowhere... [1] [this video]
Cites frogpelt · 2015-09 · on “Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama”
Also, this guy built a scale model in the Black Rock Desert: [this video] EDIT: This one doesn't include Pluto.
Cites aetherson · 2023-12 · on “Sweden Solar System”
It's walkable, but you can't see the "sun" from the "earth," and it's walkable in well more than an hour, at which point I don't think that you're really keeping the scale in mind. We can always look at images or whatever if we want to get an intellectual sense of the scale of things. I think the advantage of a model is that you feel immersed in it, and I don't think you do at this scale. It's challenging! It's hard to find a location and a scale which gives you this human sense of the sizes involved. At most scales, you have to make the planets pinpricks in size. But, especially for the inner system, you can make it work. EDIT: Here's I think something that works. [this video]