Scaled Solar System Poster 

This poster of the Solar System has high quality satellite images of the Sun: 8 planets, two comets and two asteroids. Included are all known major moons. (Dwarf Planets are artist renditions as no satellite imagery exists for them yet.) The center row of planets are all scaled to the Sun.
 

Designer Notes: This solar system poster was the first poster I made. In my grade 6 science classes I had the students make basically this same poster every year for their end of the year class project. When the school cut the science classes from 3 a week to 2, I needed to come up with something to enable the students to still be able to make the poster. So I put this poster together over a few months so the students could basically use it as a template for their own group posters. As well the science text book my school uses is not the most up-to-date. I used to bring in loads of other pictures I got off the internet to help the kids figure out how to draw the rings of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune for their solar system poster. The science text book lacked any information on the Kuiper Belt as well, so I had to add that too. I also felt it was important to show the scale of the planets to each other, but also to the Sun. The first time I showed the poster to a group of students I was quite surprised at their reaction to the size of the Sun compared to the Earth. I guess they had always known the Sun was much bigger but just seeing it displayed like that gave them a whole new perception of it. At first I had the school attach the poster up on a wall. The kids asked me to move it down though so they could look at it better. We found a good place for it under my whiteboard. Since it is laminated I didn't need to worry about the kids destroying it either. I still have the very first one I printed under my white board. Even after years of looking at the same solar system poster I still can find students sitting down on the floor looking over at it on break times. (It was this fact that encouraged me to finally make the topographic world map.) The students in my class still really enjoy staring at the solar system poster and I hope you will too.

 

Image Details:

Mercury: Created January 14, 2008, at about 3:34pm (Eastern Standard Time). This image is the first time humans got to see the side that the Mariner 10 satellite was not able to capture in 1974 and 1975.

 

Venus: Created by the Magellan spacecraft between September 1990 and May 1991, using radar information that could see through the extremely dense atmosphere. Colors are based on color images recorded by the Soviet Venera 13 and 14 spacecraft.

 

Earth: The GOES satellite took the land and cloud images on September 9, 1997. Then SeaWiFs satellite took the ocean color images between September 9-19, 1997. Finally the POES satellite took the vegetation color images between September and early October 1997.

 

Mars: Created on February 22, 1980 by the Viking 1 Orbiter. The image is centered on the 3000 km long and up to 8 km deep Valles Marineris canyon. On the left can be seen the three Tharsis volcanoes.

 

Jupiter: Created between February 17-21, 2007, by the Hubble space telescope. It was taken in honor of the New Horizons robotic spacecraft as it was passing Jupiter, on its way to study Pluto and then perhaps on to study one or more other Kuiper Belt objects. In this photo can be seen the famous Great Red Spot. A storm larger than Earth and in existence possibly since 1665. As well in this photo can be seen aurora borealis at both poles of Jupiter. In addition this photo has a computer generated image of the rings of Jupiter. The rings were created using information from the Voyager satellite missions that actually discovered the rings in 1979. Data from the Cassini satellite flyby were also used to great the image of the rings.

 

Saturn: Created in October 1999 by the Hubble Space Telescope.

 

Uranus: Was created on January 17, 1986 by the Voyager II spacecraft. The rings in this image were computer generated using information from Voyager II and the Hubble Space Telescope.

 

Neptune: 1) The larger image was created by the Voyager 2 satellite on September 21, 1989. The only satellite to have visited Neptune. At the time that image was taken a dark spot was seen was seen on its surface similar to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. On November 2, 1994, the Hubble telescope took images of Neptune and did not find the dark spot, instead a different storm was seen. It is thought that these storms may last only for months and then disappear as they get closer to the equator. The reason for this remains unknown.
2) The smaller image is a computer generated image that shows Neptune's rings that were discovered by the Voyager 2 satellite.