If Jupiter were a basketball…

The Sun a giant ball, taller than a front door, 2.3 m across

Mercurya pea
Venusa cherry
Eartha grape
Moona peppercorn
Marsa blueberry
Jupitera basketball
Saturna volleyball
Uranusan orange
Neptunean apple
Plutoa lentil

And how far apart, at the same size

Stand the giant Sun at one end of a football field, then walk out. The bars are to scale too:

Mercury, a pea100 m · about one football field
Venus, a cherry180 m · about 2 football fields
Earth, a grape250 m · about 2½ football fields
Mars, a blueberry380 m · about 4 football fields
Jupiter, a basketball1.3 km · a 15-minute walk
Saturn, a volleyball2.4 km · a 30-minute walk
Uranus, an orange4.8 km · 1 hour 5 minutes of walking
Neptune, an apple7.6 km · 1 hour 40 minutes of walking

The Moon, a peppercorn, would go round the grape Earth 65 cm away, about an arm's length. Pluto, a lentil, would be 9.9 km out. Space is mostly empty: that is why books squeeze the planets together.

How the picture works

Everything on this page is shrunk by the same amount, so you can compare any two things. Jupiter, the biggest planet, becomes a basketball. Then the Sun is a ball 2.3 metres wide, taller than a front door, and Earth is a grape. Pictures in books draw the planets big and close together so they fit on a page; at the real scale the small planets are specks and the gaps between them are huge.

Try it for real: a basketball for Jupiter, a grape for Earth, a blueberry for Mars. Lay them out on a table to see the sizes, then think about Earth sitting two and a half football fields from the Sun. To walk the distances with a smaller Sun, try the Planet Walk; for each planet's numbers, see planet sizes to scale.