Hello, my name is Doug Hubbell and today we're going to talk about astronomical distances.
And today we’re going to use this tangerine to represent the Sun.
And we’ll walk through some scales so we can better understand the distances in outer
space.
What we’re going to do is represent Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars…and they’re just
tiny grains of sand right there, come on in … take a closer look.
Jupiter and Saturn are represented by peanuts and well Saturn I don’t have any rings better
than an onion, so I put an onion on it.
What I’m going to do next is I’m going to put these in the distances that are easier
for you to comprehend, or me to comprehend, so come on!
Let’s go outside to the park and take a look at this!
Represented here is our scale, here’s the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn way out there!
So come follow me let’s go take a look!
The Sun.
Mercury at 10.4 feet.
Venus at 19.1 foot.
The Earth at 26.6 feet.
Mars at 41 feet.
Just a little bit further!
Come on you can do it!
There’s Jupiter at 138 feet.
Next we’re going to Saturn, it’s a little bit further out here, let’s go!
At 253 feet, At 253 feet we have Saturn.
Now Pluto is over 1000 feet, Pluto is over 1000 feet that direction!
We’ll go over there next.
Pluto at 1,050 feet, that’s way over there!
Our Solar system fits inside a small park when we scale the Sun to a tangerine.
What’s even more amazing is Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched 36 years ago hasn’t left
our solar system’s heliosphere.
The distance between the Sun and Earth is 93 million miles, also known as 1 Astronomical
Unit, an AU.
Did you know if the Sun was turned off like a light bulb, we wouldn’t know it for EIGHT
minutes!
Another astronomical measurement is a Light Year.
There are 63,240 Astronomical Units in ONE Light Year.
Most of our astrophotography targets are many thousands of light years away from the earth.
Back to our Tangerine Scale, One light Year is equivalent 319 miles!
Proxima Centauri is the closest star to earth At just over four light years!
Using our tangerine Sun Scale, Proxima Centauri would be 1,400 miles away!
The Distance from Earth to Mars is 33 Million Miles and if we used the tangerine sun scale,
our entire milky way would fit in-between Earth & Mars.
For most people, including me, it’s hard to understand the vast distances in outer
space.
So the next time you try astrophotography, remember, chances are the light from your
distant target, may have left before human beings existed on planet earth!
I would like to thank everyone for subscribing and helping me reach a milestone of 1,000
subscribers!
Thanks for watching and stay tuned for my next video series where I’ll walk through
the steps, using any telescope you might have, on how to take images of the planets.
We’ll see you soon!
Bye!