A View from the Back of the Envelope top

Gigameters in your hands
109 meters per mm (Magnification of ×10-12)
Scaling the universe to your desktop
How Big Are Things?
Length Area Volume Speed
10 [ -6 | -3 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 | 18 ]
If the Sun is a grain of sugar... 1012 meters per meter

1 Gm
10 Gm
100 Gm
1000 Gm
109 m
0.3 Gm
316 Mm 		3 Gm
3162 Mm
106km
 		1010 m
32 Gm
1011 m
316 Gm
0.3 Tm
2.114 AU
0.293 lt·hr
1012 m
3162 Gm
3 Tm
21.14 AU
2.93 lt·hr
Sun
1.4  Gm

Moon orbit's diameter
0.769 Gm


lt·min (light-minute)
17.99 Gm

Sun-Earth distance
149.6 Gm

Sun-Venus distance
108.2 Gm

Mercury orbit's diameter
116 Gm

Sun-Mercury distance
57.9 Gm

Sun-Saturn distance
1425 Gm

Sun-Jupiter distance
778.4 Gm

Light-hour (lt·hr)
1079 Gm

Jupiter orbit's diameter
1556 Gm

Sun-Uranus distance
2867 Gm

1 Gm per mm
Actual size (though rough, as screen resolution varies).
Sun Mercury Venus Earth&Moon
Moon's orbit is the same
diameter as the Sun
1/2 lt·ks (ticks every 1/10 light-kilosecond (lt·103s))
0 1/10 2/10 3/10 1/2 lt·ks

Links

A Solar System Scale Model Meta Page

A View from the Back of the Envelope
Comments encouraged. - Mitchell N Charity <mcharity@lcs.mit.edu> 

Doables:
  Add some content...
  Still feels quite rough.
  10^n lt sec?  As minute/hour are to be discouraged.

Notes:
  Mixed precision in Gm/Tm/AU/lthr header :(

History:
 2001.Apr.20  Added link to `How Big Are Things?'.
 1998.Jun.17  Corrected error with magnitude boundaries (3.333->3.162).
 1998.Apr.02  Changed sun and added inner solar system bar.
 1998.Mar.11  Created.  But not released - too primative.