The scale of the Solar System as you see it here is distorted in a couple of ways. At first I tried to construct an accurate model, based on information from a world atlas, but the vast spaces between the planets made it virtually impossible to locate an object on the screen. In the present model, then, the distances of the planets from the Sun are, to the best of my knowledge, scaled by a factor of 0.01 relative to their sizes. In other words, in an accurate model, each of the planets would be 100 times farther from the Sun. The location of the moon is also compromised; it is roughly 1/50th the distance from the Earth that it would be were the scale of the distances to match that of the sizes. In addition, the Sun itself is scaled to a factor of 0.2 relative to the planets, and so it is one-fifth the size it would be in an accurate model. It had previously been scaled to half of this, until I discovered that at that size it would have been smaller than Jupiter.

The initial view of the Solar Sytem here, including the Sun, nine planets, and the Earth's moon, is parallel to the ecliptic. As you zoom out you'll see more planets appear on the horizontal (x) axis.

These informative charts will open in a new browser window:

Solar System Chart
Planetary Information Table

Drag the frame border down to hide this text frame and increase the image height
(this will redraw the image).
Adjust or mute the sound using the MIDI control of your sound mixer.

Of all the planets, Pluto is by far the most difficult to locate on the screen. It is situated to the left of the Sun as you zoom out. Depicted here in shades of gray, it is somewhat dimly lit, and from its vicinity the Sun appears as but a bright speck.

If you are interested in viewing 3D worlds, you may want to look into a browser plug-in. The one built into my Netscape was, frankly, not very good, at least in terms of image rendering. I recently downloaded and installed a couple which I found much more visually appealing. The one I preferred, which I'm using now, is the WorldView 2.0 for Netscape, by Intervista. You can go to their site by clicking here. It's got some cool features, such as a function to set the entire image automatically spinning around an object. The WorldView is a free download, and basically installs itself through Windows. Unfortunately I can't tell you first-hand about other platforms, or even other browsers, but the WorldView is available for Internet Explorer on Windows, as well as for Netscape on Macintosh. Do observe the system requirements; if you don't have at least a 100 mHz processor and 16 mb ram, your computer will be quite strained. My own system exactly meets these requirements, and it takes at least two minutes to load this page and its associated textures, along with the plug-in, and up to ten minutes if I am multi-tasking. Naturally, the level of performance as well is determined by these factors and others.

Oh, and I've reserved a page especially for geeks and fanatics, the technical notes.

I hope you enjoy your visit to the Virtual Solar System.
Once you've had your fill you can use the above link to the main page to escape.