If the Sun were a beach ball, where would Earth be?

Scale models are the only honest way to show the solar system. At beach-ball scale, Earth is a peppercorn 26 metres away.

The distance Unit

Almost exactly Earth

1 au is further than 2 of the 9 references on this page.

Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.

Every reference on this page, with its size and its ratio to your number
Reference	Size	Yours ÷ theirs	Note
Mercury	0.387 au	2.58×	A pinhead 10 m out
Venus	0.723 au	1.38×	A peppercorn at 19 m
Earth	1 au	1×	A peppercorn at 26 m
Mars	1.52 au	0.656×	A pinhead at 40 m
Jupiter	5.2 au	0.192×	A walnut at 135 m
Saturn	9.59 au	0.104×	A hazelnut at 250 m
Uranus	19.2 au	1/19.2	A pea at 500 m
Neptune	30 au	1/30	A pea at 780 m
Proxima Centauri	268,319 au	1/268,319	The next beach ball, 7 000 km away

At the scale where the Sun is a 30 cm beach ball, Earth is a 2.7 mm peppercorn 26 m away, and Neptune is 780 m out.
On that same scale, the nearest star is 7 000 km away — London to Kabul. Everything between is empty.

Frequently asked

Neptune is 30 times further from the Sun than Earth. Any diagram that fits them all on a page has compressed distance by a factor of thousands.

Only outdoors. The Sweden Solar System uses the Globen arena in Stockholm as the Sun and puts Neptune 229 km away in Söderhamn.