Did you know that if the Earth were the size of a basketball the Sun would be over one hundred feet in diameter?
Solar System with sizes, but not distances, to scale. (click to enlarge)

The diameter of the Earth is 7,926 miles (12,756 km) while the diameter of the Sun is 865,000 miles (1.39 million km), about 109 times larger. If you shrunk the Earth to the size of a basketball (11.8 inches in diameter, or just under a foot) while keeping the Solar System to scale, then the Sun would be a ball 107 feet in diameter while Ceres, the largest asteroid, would be golf-ball sized. How do other objects in the Universe measure up? Check out the Astronomical Sizes tool.



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