Schematic illustration showing the scale of the Solar System compared to North America. Imagine that the Sun were reduced to a diameter of 1 mile ??a reduction factor of 864, 000. If we placed the Sun at Saratoga Springs, New York, then the orbit of the outermost planet, Neptune, would pass approximately through long Anchorage, Alaska, 3240 miles away. Compared to our 1 mile Sun, the planets would range in diameter from 18.5 feet (Mercury) to 528 feet (Jupiter). (The planets are shown to scale with respect to each other, but not with respect to their orbits.)