How big is our solar system in au

How big is our Solar System?

Our solar system is so big it is almost impossible to imagine its size if you use ordinary units like feet or miles. The distance from Earth to the Sun is 93 million miles (149 million kilometers), but the distance to the farthest planet Neptune is nearly 3 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers).

What is the astronomical unit (AU)?

Scientists figured out a while ago that writing out those huge numbers wasn't the best use of their time, so they invented the Astronomical Unit (AU). One AU, about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers), represents the average distance from the Sun to the Earth.

How many miles from Earth to the Sun is one AU?

One AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun, which is about 150 mil-lion kilometers or 93 million miles. The area of the Sun’s influ-ence stretches far beyond the planets, forming a giant bubble called the heliosphere. The enormous bubble of the heliosphere is created by the solar wind, a stream of charged gas blowing outward from the Sun.

What is the largest planet in the Solar System?

Our solar system's largest planet is an average distance of 484 million miles (778 million kilometers) from the Sun. That's 5.2 AU. Jupiter is the largest of the planets, spanning nearly 1.75 millimeters in diameter on our football field scale. Jupiter's diameter is about equal to the thickness of a U.S quarter in our shrunken solar system.

What is astronomical unit?

Astronomical unit, a unit of length effectively equal to the average, or mean, distance between Earth and the Sun, defined as 149,597,870.7 km (92,955,807.3 miles). The astronomical unit provides a convenient way to express and relate distances of objects in the solar system and to carry out astronomical calculations.

How do astronomers measure the size of our Solar System?

The best way to appreciate the size of our solar system is by creating a scaled model of it that shows how far from the sun the eight planets are located. Astronomers use the distance between Earth and sun, which is 93 million miles, as a new unit of measure called the Astronomical Unit.