At the American Museum of Natural History in NYC is the Scales of the Universe. In the center of a large atrium is the Hayden Sphere which serves as a point of reference around which other objects are placed to give you a sense of scale.
26.5 meters (87 feet) in diameter—represents the size of the Sun, then Jupiter stretches 2.7 meters (9 feet) across, while Earth is a mere 24 centimeters (9.5 inches) in diameter.
While the Hayden Sphere gives a sense of size, there is another exhibit that
There’s another globe, 12 feet in diameter so much smaller than the Hayden Sphere, in the lobby of the Daily News Building on 42nd Street, right off 2nd Avenue. This exhibit illustrates scale in another way, distance.
If the Sun were the size of the globe and placed here then comparitively: The Moon would be 1/3 inch in diameter and placed at the main enterace to Grand Central Terminal.
Using this as a baseline, I used ChatGPT to work out the distance to the rest of the planets.
If you use the globe in the first floor of the Daily News building in New York City on 42nd Street. As a scale model of the solar system, how far to the sun?
1. Size of the lobby globe (Earth)
The rotating globe in the lobby is 12 feet in diameter.
2. Scale relative to the real Earth
Real Earth diameter ≈ 7,917.5 miles
Scale factor:
- 7,917.5 miles → 12 feet
- 1 foot on the model = ~660 miles in reality
3. Distance to the Sun on this scale
Real Earth–Sun distance ≈ 93,000,000 miles
Convert to model distance:
Convert to miles:
If the lobby globe is used as a scale model of the Earth, the Sun would be about 27 miles away. I then drew a circle around the Daily News Building with a radius of 27 miles. This put the sun at Morristown, NJ.
I next asked GPT to generate a Google Maps KML file with all the planets and their approximate distances using the earlier one foot = 660 miles scale.
Kinda a nerdy thing to do on a day off, but now you know.
- the Sun is in Morristown, NJ
- Mercury orbit takes it over Summit and Montville, NJ.
- Venus orbits over Newark Airport and Edison and Hacketstown to the West.
- Earth is at 42nd & 2nd with the Moon at Grand Central. It’s orbit takes it as far south as South Brunswick and Clinton to the West.
- Mars orbits over by White Plains, NY and Allentown, PA to the West.
- Jupiter’s orbit takes it over Albany, NY to the North, Springfield, MA to the East, Harrisburg to the West and almost to Baltimore to the South.
- Saturn is out over the Atlantic, past Boston to the Northeast and into Canada in the Northwest. Down South it orbit is almost to Richmond, VA and Harrisburg, PA to the West.
- Uranus orbits out past Detroit and almost to Cincinnati in the West and as far south as Myrtle Beach, SC.
- Neptune’s orbit takes you out to Bermuda to the East, Jacksonville, FL in the South, St. Louis in the West and deep into Canada in the North.
- Pluto’s orbit takes it as far South as Miami and over Kansas City to the West and into Newfoundland in the Northeast and Winnipeg to the Northwest.
You can interact with it here.
