Every Round Object in the Solar System, to Scale

Below is a correctly scaled, reasonably correctly colored view of the largest bodies in the solar system. There is one version with just the planets, and a second with everything in the solar system that is larger than 400 kilometers in diameter except the Sun, which brings in all the round moons, four asteroids, and more than 100 objects beyond Neptune. Please note that it is copyrighted; the people who processed the NASA and ESA images (Bjorn Jonsson, Mattias Malmer, Ted Stryk, and Gordan Ugarkovic) want to find out how it's being used, so please send Emily Lakdawalla an email, especially if you plan to print it. But if you wish to use one of these slides for an educational purpose or a professional presentation, our permission is granted in advance. There is also a labeled version of this montage available for purchase from the Planetary Society store.

The eight planets, to scale (widescreen)

Here's the one that includes moons and dwarf planets. Unlike the planets that have actually been visited by spacecraft, the appearance of the dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt should be considered schematic at best. Their numbers and sizes are based upon a table of the known relatively bright Kuiper belt objects maintained by Mike Brown; except for the eight largest objects, their colors are random. The detailed appearance of the objects in the Kuiper belt is likely to be different. But, statistically speaking, it's probably reasonably representative of the sizes and numbers of things that are out there.

Montage © 2011 Emily Lakdawalla, The Planetary Society. Image data courtesy NASA/JPL and JHUAPL/CIW. Image processing by Bjorn Jonsson; Mattias Malmer; Ted Stryk; Gordan Ugarkovic. TNO artwork by A. Feild (STSCI)