Journal · Space
Planets to scale: do they all fit between Earth and the Moon?
A popular fact says every planet fits in the gap between Earth and the Moon. Here you can line them up and check. Then see the planets to scale by size and by distance, and build a scale model of the solar system from a ball.
Planets to Scale. Everything in the first picture is drawn to one scale, the gap too. The numbers are NASA’s, and the page does its own sums. Sound is off until you turn it on.
Why pictures of the solar system look wrong
A picture can show the planets’ sizes or their distances, but not both. If Earth were one pixel wide, the Sun would be 109 pixels wide and about 11,700 pixels away. Neptune would be about 354,000 pixels away. That is why most pictures squash the distances, and why the planets look closer together than they are.
Where the popular fact comes from
The usual version adds up the planets’ widths and compares them with 384,400 km, the Moon’s average distance. But that distance runs from the centre of Earth to the centre of the Moon. The planets have to fit between the surfaces, which takes away 8,116 km. Measured that way, they fit only when the Moon is near its farthest.
What this page leaves out
- Planets never line up in a row like this. The gap puzzle compares sizes. It is not a real event.
- Distances from the Sun are averages. Each orbit is a slightly squashed circle, so each planet’s distance changes over its year.
- Widths are taken across each planet’s equator, its widest way. Jupiter and Saturn are a little flatter top to bottom. Average widths make the seven planets 7,925 km shorter, and at the Moon’s average distance they still do not fit.
- Saturn’s rings are left out, because the question is about the planets themselves.
- Moon counts change as new moons are found. These are NASA’s counts as of March 2025.
How the numbers were checked
Every width, distance, day and year comes from NASA’s planetary fact sheets. The page does the sums itself, so the pictures, the tables and the answers below all use the same numbers. Light travels 299,792 km every second.
Sources: NASA NSSDCA Planetary Fact Sheet (updated 18 March 2025), and the Earth, Moon and Sun fact sheets, all checked on 30 October 2026. Proxima Centauri’s distance, 4.2465 light-years, is from the Wikipedia article on Proxima Centauri.
Questions people ask
Do all the planets fit between Earth and the Moon?
Only when the Moon is near its farthest. At the average distance, the gap between the two surfaces is 376,284 km. The seven other planets, measured across their equators, add up to 387,941 km, so they are 11,657 km too long. They fit once the Moon is at least 396,058 km away, which happens near apogee.
What is the order of the planets from the Sun?
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The first four are small and rocky. The last four are giants, made mostly of gas and ice. Pluto orbits farther out still, and is a dwarf planet.
What are the planets in order of size?
From biggest to smallest: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercury. Jupiter is 142,984 km across, about 11 times as wide as Earth. Mercury is 4,879 km across, about 38 percent of Earth’s width.
How many Earths would fit inside the Sun?
About 1.3 million, by volume. The Sun is about 109 times as wide as Earth, and volume grows with the cube of width.
How long does light take to get from the Sun to Earth?
About 8 minutes 19 seconds, across the average distance of 149.6 million km. Light takes about 43 minutes to reach Jupiter and about 4 hours 11 minutes to reach Neptune.
How big would a scale model of the solar system be?
If the Sun were a 22 cm soccer ball, Earth would be a speck about 2 mm wide, 24 metres away. Neptune would be under 1 cm wide and 714 metres away. The nearest other star would be about 6,350 km away.
Is Pluto a planet?
Not any more. Since 2006, astronomers have called Pluto a dwarf planet. It is smaller than our Moon, and it shares its part of space with many other icy bodies.