Online Activity - Scale Models Week 1

“Space is big. Really big. You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s but that’s
nothing compared to space.”
Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

Purpose
• Develop an appreciation of the scales of the universe by building models of our solar system and
of the local group of galaxies.
• Use basic metric and astronomical units of measurement

What You Will Need

To do this activity you will need access to the following:

• Paper and scissors

• A ruler and/or tape measure (metric preferred by not required)
• A map of your model area (you can print out the one included with this activity).

Getting Help/Helping Others: The Activity Discussion Board

One of the challenges of doing activities online is that it is harder to consult with others if you get
stuck or have trouble understanding the activity. While I will be running a Zoom session to discuss the
activity and you are always welcome to contact me with your questions, I also wanted to give you a
chance to work with others in the class. So, I am setting up a discussion board for this (and future)
activities. Participation in the discussion board (either asking or helping) is worth up to 2 bonus points
on the activity.

Background – The Solar System Scale

The distances and size scales that we use in astronomy are far removed from everyday experience.
However, one way we can begin to visualize these distances is by making a scale model. A scale model is
a miniaturized version of the real thing, in which the relative sizes of all the parts are kept the same. You

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may have had experience with scale or toy models of trains, planes, buildings, doll houses etc. at some
point in your life. In this exercise we will use a scale model of our solar system to better appreciate how
far apart things are in space.

The solar system scale model has a scale of 1 to 20 billion. This means that each meter in the model
represents 20 billion meters or 14% of the distance between the Sun and the Earth in the real solar
system. On this scale:

The Sun is only 7 cm across, or about the size of this circle

The largest planet, Jupiter, is only 7 mm across, or about the size of this circle

The Earth is smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. (No kidding!!) The model diameters
listed in the table below let you see how big each of these bodies is in our model.

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Procedure
Get a map of a location familiar to you. Your school or neighborhood are good choices. A possible
map of the college is at the end of this activity, but you may use other locations if they are more familiar
to you—your school, your neighborhood, a local landmark, etc.

• You need a one-page map of your chosen location. Google Maps or a similar tool works fine, or
you may use another map available to you. Your map should not distort scale.
• Important: The map needs a distance scale in meters. You can click on the distance scale of a
Google map to change from feet or miles to metric units.
• Three hundred meters should cover anything between one half to all of your map page. If using
Google, zoom in or out until you get a useable scale.
• Print out your map. (I will later ask you to draw on your map, photograph your drawing, and
upload your photo. If you prefer to work with and upload a PDF, you may.)

Table I The Solar System Scale Model 1 to 20 billion

Object Distance from Model Distance Diameter (km) Model
Sun (AU) (meters) Diameter
(mm)
Mercury 0.387 3 4,900 0.2
Venus 0.723 5.5 12,100 0.6
Earth 1.000 7.5 12,800 0.6
Mars 1.524 12 6,800 0.3
Jupiter 5.203 39 143,000 7.2
Saturn 9.539 72 120,000 6.0
Uranus 19.19 143 51,000 2.6
Neptune 30.06 225 50,000 2.5
Pluto 39.54 295 1,500 0.1

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Understand the Table of Solar System Distances.
On the table above, the distance in the real solar system are given Astronomical Units (AU).

1. What is the definition of an AU? ________________________________________________

The distances you should use in your scale model are given in the third column.

2. Confirm: Do the units in the third column match the units on your map? __________________

Make Your Model

• Select a location for the Sun and mark and label it with a dot on your map.
• Mark and label positions for the planets (and Pluto) on your map. You can mark them as
though they are all in one line if you like, though they are usually NOT lined up.
• Use the scale given on your map as accurately as is reasonable. It may work best to figure out
how big 10 meters is on your map, and use that to estimate distances.
• Some dots on your map may turn out almost on top of other dots. This is OK. If this is the case,
you should give a single dot more than one label.

Think about the actual sizes of the planets in your model

3. If the scaled sizes of the sun and planets were drawn on the ground in your model, would they
be visible on the Google map at all?____________________________________________

Remember we are talking about objects of these sizes:

Earth .

Jupiter

Sun
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Optional—Photograph your model
• You should do this if you can actually visit your location with a camera. It might help to take a
classmate or friend.
• Stand at the location for the Sun in your model. Refer to the map you have made to pick at least
three easily-seen objects that are about the right distances to represent specific planets. Take a
picture that shows how far away they are.
• Write a caption for your photograph explaining these distances. It might go something like

“My friend took this picture from the Sun’s location at______________________,

Earth is near ______________________________,

Jupiter is by the ____________________________,

and Pluto is where I am standing, near ____________________________.”

The Stellar Scale

Stars are very far away compared to any solar system distance.

When we work on this scale it helps to use a much bigger set of distance units than AUs, so we’re
going to switch to light years. A light year is the distance (not time!) that a beam of light travels in 1
year. A light year is roughly 10 trillion km (10,000,000,000,000 km).

One cool side effect of this is that when you’re looking at something that is light years away, you’re
looking at it that many years in the past. So, if an object is one light year away, you’re seeing how it
looked one year ago. If it’s 10 light years away you’re seeing how it looked 10 years ago. If it’s changed
since that time you won’t know it until the light has time to get to us. In effect, looking out into space
also means looking into the past. A telescope is also a time machine.

Even our nearest neighbors, Alpha Centauri (and its slightly closer companion Proxima Centauri) are
about 4.2 light years or 270,000 AU away. On the scale we have been using, this is about 2000 km or
1300 miles away.
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 4. Name a city that is about 2000km away. ______________________________________

Remember that these stars are typically around the same size as the Sun – most are a little bit
smaller, while a handful are much bigger – maybe the size of a large house. So, compared to the
distances between them stars are tiny. If we tried to make a scale model of the stellar scale that fit onto
a college campus then the stars themselves would be microscopic.

The Galactic Scale

We’ve made a model of the solar system scale and thought about how to extend this to the stellar
scale. But if we want to take this a step further and consider what the universe looks like on the galactic
scale we’re going to have shrink our model quite a bit. While our solar system contains just one star, the
Sun, our galaxy contains a couple of hundred billion stars and it is just one of the hundreds of billions of
galaxies in the observable universe. So to start looking at the galactic scale we’re going to create a
model of that includes our galaxy, the Milky Way, and several other nearby galaxies in what we call the
Local Group. To do this we need to shrink down our solar system model by a factor of 500,000,000,000!

The Milky Way is 100,000 ly across so we will need to change the scale drastically in order to fit it
and other nearby galaxies into a reasonable size. We will use a scale of 1 in 1022 (1 in
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). In this case a million light years (or 1 Mly) = will be equal to 1 meter
in our scale model. This will let us fit the entire local group into a room or a small outdoor space.

The table below lists the right ascension (RA) along with the distance from the Milky Way (in Mly or
millions of light years) and the diameter (in kly). Note that RA is a coordinate system used by
astronomers to measure the locations of objects in the sky. Right ascension along with declination forms
a grid on the sky that can be used to locate any object similar to the way longitude and latitude can be
used to find any location on the Earth. Confusingly enough RA is listed in “hours” running from 0 hours
to 24 hours. In this activity we will ignore declination and treat the galaxies as if they were all on the
same plane in space – in reality some should be up “above” the Milky Way while others are “below” it.

To create your scale model cut out pieces of paper as circles with the diameters listed in the last
column. If you don’t have a metric ruler you can use the fact that 1 inch is roughly 25 mm. So the Milky
Way is 100/25 = 4 inches across on this scale. Write the names of the galaxies on each one (provided
there is room – some of these are fairly small).

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 Select a location for the Milky Way in the center of the room or other space where you are making
your model. From this location imagine a 24 hour clock surrounding the Milky Way. In one direction is 0
hours (or 24 hours). The opposite direction is 12 hours. 6 hours is on one side while 18 hours is on the
other. See the diagram below. Use this to determine what direction each of the other galaxies is relative
to the Milky Way.

0 hour/
24 hours

18 hours 6 hours

12 hours

Use the distances given in the 3rd column to determine how far away from the Milky Way each
galaxy is. If you don’t have a metric ruler or tape measure you are welcome to use the approximation 1
yard = 1 meter for this model.

Table II: Galactic Scale Model 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Object Right Distance Model Diameter Model
Name Ascension from Milky Distance (Kly) Diameter
(hrs) Way (kly) from Milky (mm)
Way
(meters)
Milky Way --- ---- --- 100 100
Large 5 160 0.16 29.7 29.7
Magellanic
Cloud
Small 8 200 0.20 18.5 18.5
Magellanic
Cloud
Leo I 10 820 0.82 2.8 2.8
Tucana 23 3200 3.2 2.6 2.6
Dwarf
M 31 1 2500 2.5 137.9 138
M 33 2 2800 2.8 56.1 56

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 Once you have finished making your scale model take a photograph of it. If that’s not an option try
making a sketch of it.

5. Note that on this scale the diameters of the galaxies are large enough that they aren’t
microscopic compared to the distance between them. In the space below discuss about what
this might mean for collisions between galaxies.

6. Now that you have a chance to create models of the universe on a couple of different scales,
what questions does this raise that you would like to learn about in this course related to the
sizes and scales of objects in the universe?

Turning in your Activity

Include your answers to the 6 red questions in the activity writeup in a PDF. Upload a PDF or
photograph of your Solar System Scale model map (with captions clearly labelled) and a photograph of
your Galactic Scale Model.

Rubric
Activity questions: 2

Solar System Scale map labelled: 4

Galactic Scale image with captions: 4

Discussion Board: +2 Bonus points

*This work adapted from Joann Eisberg and Dave Kary is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Joann.eisberg@chaffey.edu; dkary@citruscollege.edu

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Here is a model map for Activity 1. It has a scale in meters. If you choose a different location your map should too.