The Sun and the inner Solar System on the east side of
the National Air and Space Museum on Jefferson Drive. In the distance,
a group of visitors has stopped at the Jupiter unit. The short unit
in the foreground provides an overview of the Solar System.
Pluto, far smaller than the head of a pin, is 6.5 football fields down
the street from the Sun, a comfortable 10-minute walk. It’s remarkable
that distant Pluto is even bound to the tiny Sun by gravity. More remarkable
are the likely trillion comets that are also bound to the Sun. On the
scale of this model Solar System, the Sun’s cloud of comets—the
Oort Cloud—extends half way across the continental United States.
The farthest comets, some of which might be in Wichita, Kansas, are
destined to take about 50 million years to orbit the Sun once.
