Burton Sharoff age 12, of Denver, Colo

What is beyond the Solar System?

Get ready to exercise your imagination and stretch it as far as it will go.  It is hard enough to grasp the size and form of the Solar System. We can do this by planning a scaled down model then using the imagination to stretch it to its proper size, The hard fob is to fit it into the vast heavens, Beyond the Solar System there seems to be endless space dotted with orderly systems of stars.

Our model Solar System will be about three and a quarter miles wide: The sun has shrunk to a two foot beach ball, Around it are nine slightly oval paths, ,one outside the other, These are the orbits of the planets. Mercury has dwindled to a pinhead 82 feet from the beach ball sun. Each is pea sized and 430 feet from the model sun, Jupiter is an orange traveling an orbit half a mile wide: Little Pluto pedals around the outside rim of the Solar System, On our model its orbit is about three and a quarter miles long and almost as wide,

Now stretch the model to proper size. The beach ball becomes a blazing star 860000 miles in diameter. From side to sides the Solar System is some 70300 million miles wide. Our earth travels its 600 million mile orbit at 181 miles a second. At that speed, we could cross the Solar System in twelve years.

Beyond the Solar System are the stars, Lets return to our model and place a few of our starry neighbors. Proxima and Alpha Centauri would be about 12,000 miles away. Our little model now reaches half the distance around the equator. Bright Sirius becomes a larger beach ball star some 24,000 miles away.

Now lets imagine a space ship that travels as fast as our earth travels around the sun. We choose the best time of year and point towards Proxima, Traveling at 18. miles a second we cross the orbit of Pluto in about six years. We wave goodbye to the Solar System and buckle down for a long trip across empty space.