Schematic illustration showing the scale of the Solar System compared to North America. Imagine that the Sun were reduced to a diameter of 1 kilometre (km) ??a reduction factor of 1.4 million. If we placed the Sun in the middle of Lake St Clair (Detroit, Michigan), then the orbit of the outermost planet, Neptune, would pass approximately through long Beach, Los Angeles, 3240 km away. Compared to our 1 km Sun, the planets would range in diameter from 3.5 metres (Mercury) to 100.4 metres (Jupiter). (The planets are shown to scale with respect to each other, but not with respect to their orbits.)