Watch: Solar system to scale, mapped out in a desert
Digital Reporter
Sunday, September 20, 2015, 4:41 PM - While the Earth is over 140 million km from the sun, it's difficult to wrap your head around how small our part of the galaxy is compared to the rest of the universe.
It may be a bit overwhelming, but two filmmakers have built a scale model of the solar system to help make it all more understandable.
"The only way to see a scale model of the solar system is to build one," Wylie Overstreet, one of the model creators says in the video below (full version).
Overstreet and his friend Alex Gorosh drove more than 960 km to the biggest space they could find, which was Black Rock Desert in Nevada.
They used about 11 km of space to map out the orbits of each of the major planets and filmed a time-lapse video from a nearby mountaintop. Each orbit in the video is illuminated to show the accurate distance between each planet.
RELATED: Backlit Pluto shows off icy peaks, haze... and is that fog?
The pair made calculations using a tool from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Global News reports.
"Humans understand things visually," Overstreet told Global. "We can explain that the (sun) is eight light minutes away, but that doesn't really convey anything meaningful. With this, I hope to show them that context... It gives meaning."
What's the next project on tap for the pair? "Deep Time," an attempt to explain time in a more understandable fashion.
Source: Global News | YouTube
Related video: GoPro launched into space found after two years
