Enthusiasts have built a model of the solar system on a scale of 1: 847,638,000 in the Nevada desert

Two young people - filmmakers Alex Gorosh (Alex Gorosh) and Wylie Overstreet (Wylie Overstreet) - the basis for his short film To Scale: The Solar System decided to make a model of the solar system, the scale of which would make people feel the full depth of space and significance of distances even closest planets. They conceived to build their model in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, strictly observing the accepted scale of 1: 847,638,000 and the size of the planets, the role of which was played by LED-backlit glass balls. Having placed the "Sun" in the conventional center, they calculated the "orbit" of the farthest planet - Neptune - whose radius was equal in the adopted coordinate system 5.6 km.

Despite the fact that the authors pursued a spectacular goal rather than a scientific goal, they approached the matter quite thoroughly. Having previously created a model in the form of a drawing on paper, the guys found a suitable place in Nevada so that the model of the Solar System would give the impression of a huge distance between the planets. Being already in place, they measured the radii to the “planets” with the help of the iPhone, and the “orbits” were built with the help of the automobile navigator. So that the “orbit” itself could be clearly seen from the air — they were filming also from a quadcopter — behind a machine that was moving along an “orbit”, they dragged a load that left a noticeable mark on the ground. If the “neighboring planets” could still be reached on foot, then in order to get to the “Neptune”, of course, I had to use a car.


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The result of all this work was a timelapse video, shot at night from one of the nearest hills, which captured the motion of a machine moving in different orbits of the built "Solar System".

Joseph Samuilovich Shklovsky, author of the book “The Universe. A life. Reason ", gives its calculations in order to simulate the distances between the planets, but on a smaller scale:" We can more clearly present the relative scales of the Solar system as follows. Let the Sun be depicted as a billiard ball with a diameter of 7 cm. Then the planet nearest to the Sun - Mercury is at this scale at a distance of 280 cm, the Earth - at a distance of 760 cm, the giant planet Jupiter is removed at a distance of about 40 m, and in many respects, the still mysterious Pluto is about 300 m. The size of the globe on this scale is slightly more than 0.5 mm, the lunar diameter is a little more than 0.1 mm, and the moon's orbit has a diameter of about 3 cm. ”

Video about making the movie To Scale: The Solar System can be viewed below: