Now, most people here know that I used to be an astronomy (well, astrophysics) major, and it's still one of my biggest interests. In the past I've had trouble getting across just how big some things are out there, and the scale of the rest of the universe to us. These fix that problem.
OK, the first picture is Earth and the rest of the terrestrial (ie, rocky and solid, not gaseous) planets, plus pluto, which may or may not be a planet depending on who you talk to.
OK, now we have relative sizes if you include the rest of the planets of the solar system:
OK, still our solar system, but we scale everything by the Sun.
OK, now that we have the image in our head of just how big the sun is compared to everything in the solar system, including the tiny speck there that is earth, our next picture is of the Sun vs some well-known nearby stars.
OK, and in our last picture, we compare those to some actually decent-sized stars on the scale:
Antares, the biggest star in these pictures is the 15th brightest star in our sky, and is about 15.5 times the mass of the Sun, and has a diameter that is about 700 times larger. While good sized, stars can get much, much bigger. The biggest star known is nearly 3 times the size of ANTARES, and weighs up to 100 times as much as the sun.
Anyway, hope at least some people find these as interesting as I did.
-Arlos
