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How big is our solar system?

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Scientists knew this cold, dark space between stars existed, calling the boundary between it and the bubble of hot, charged particles surrounding our solar system the heliopause. Even so, they didn't know how dense this boundary might be. read more

Back to our car analogy for a second. At those distances, it would take you 19 million years to complete the journey to the edge of the Solar System. Even NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, the fastest object ever launched from Earth would need 37,000 years to make the trip. So as you can see, our Solar System is a really really big place. read more

So, if our model were to represent the atom instead of the solar system, the "Sun" (nucleus) would have to be a ball 100 times smaller (the size of a peppercorn) and the "planets" (electrons) far too small to be visible; either that, or we would have to spread the objects 100 times farther apart. read more

The end of the solar system is about 122 astronomical units (AU) away from the sun, where one AU is 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). That's about three times as far out as Pluto, which is about 40 AU from the sun, or about six times farther away from Earth than Neptune's orbit. read more

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