What’s out there and where exactly is it? T HE S CALE OF THE S OLAR S YSTEM

W HAT ’ S IN OUR S OLAR S YSTEM ? Inner Planets Mercury Venus Earth Mars Dwarf Planets Ceres Pluto Haumea Makemake Eris Regions Asteroid Belt Kuiper Belt Oort Cl oud Gas Giants Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune

T HE P LANETS

D WARF P LANETS

C LASS D ISCUSSION You will each get a long strip of register paper Label one side as the position of the Sun, and the other side as the position of Pluto Fold the strip of paper in half, mark the halfway point, and then unfold it.

Uranus Now fold your paper back in half. Then fold it in half again. Mark the two positions of the folds on your paper. S P US P Saturn Neptune

Now fold just the part of the paper in between the Sun and Saturn in half. Jupiter US P S N Congratulations! You’ve just scaled the outer Solar System! Now we need to do the inner Solar System. Just focus on the paper between the Sun and Jupiter for the next parts.

Fold the Sun out to meet Jupiter, and label the halfway point: This is the average location of the asteroid belt. Which dwarf planet goes here? S J Ceres

Fold the Sun out to meet Ceres and mark the position of the fold. S J Just on the inside of the fold, closer to the Sun, mark the position of Earth. Just on the outside of the fold, closer to Ceres, mark the position of Mars. C

Try to split the distance between the Sun and the Earth into thirds. S J On the third closer to the Sun, put Mercury. On the third closer to Earth, put Venus. C E M

C LASS D ISCUSSION Any idea where the nearest star would be? S J C E M M V About 4 miles away