Explore the Celestial Neighborhood ... in Your Neighborhood!
Whether you live in a city or in a more sparsely populated region, your celestial neighborhood contains wide-open spaces and fascinating landmarks. NASA invites teachers, organizations and clubs, families, and inquisitive individuals to get to know our celestial neighborhood by modeling the solar system here on Earth. Experience through activities and exhibits the grand scale of our solar system and the relatively small planets and other objects that orbit our sun!
- Tour an existing scale model of the solar system here on Earth or create your own scale model using common, inexpensive materials!
- Teachers, visit our Classrooms page for classroom-appropriate suggestions to help your students get to know the objects in our solar system and their sizes and distances from our sun.
- Community program providers, visit our Organization & Clubs page for more information about how museums, science centers, parks, libraries, astronomical societies, and youth groups are shrinking the solar system! Like a toy car, these models have all the right parts placed in the right positions relative to each other -- allowing you to get a sense of the "real thing."
- Document your students, program participants -- or yourself! -- touring our celestial neighborhood with photographs, artwork, music, or words and submit them to Share Your Stories.
Tour the Solar System Here on Earth
Scale models of the solar system have been developed all around the world. Tour a scale model and submit your pictures and stories of people exploring our solar system through our
Share Your Stories.
Know of other scale models? Please let us know.
