A Tour of the Solar System in Nottingham

Welcome to the Nottingham Solar System Model.

You will find here a complete guide to visiting the virtual solar system model (SSM) in Nottingham. A tour of the SSM will help you to understand the sizes of the planets in relation to the immense distances which separate them. The model is the answer to a simple question -

What would the Solar System look like reduced to the size of Nottingham?

The Solar System Model is centred in Nottingham's largest open space, Wollaton Park. What if we imagine the Sun in the centre of the Park, in the gardens behind Wollaton Hall, and place the outermost body (Pluto) at Nottingham Castle, 2.3 miles (3.6 km) away? On this scale the four rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) all fit within the boundary of the Hall gardens, and the two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) are situated within the surrounding Park. The SSM has been designed in such a way that Wollaton Hall is visible from all the planets, which allows their distances from the Sun to be visualised. To make this possible, the remaining planets (Uranus and Neptune) have been placed on higher ground to the west of Wollaton Park.

You can begin your tour of the Solar System Model by clicking on the map below.

The scale of the Model is approximately 1 : 1,600,000,000

This means that every metre on the ground represents 1.6 million km (or 1 million miles)
or, in more familiar terms, that 1,600 km (or 1,000 miles) is reduced to the length of 1 mm.

A tour of the SSM gives a sense of the relative sizes of the orbits of the planets around the Sun, and a series of maps and guides are provided to help you find your way across the Solar System. However, in order to show the sizes of the planets and the orbits of their moons at the scale of the model, a series of images are also given in which they are illustrated in relation to the size of a human figure. The maps and images can all be accessed via the map of the SSM at the bottom of this page. A guide to using the maps is also provided.

A tour of all the planets may be made either on foot or with the help of public transport. The entire walk from Pluto to Neptune has a length of 6 miles (10 km) and follows (with minor variations) the first stage of Nottinghamshire's long distance footpath, the Robin Hood's Way. A guide to the walking route is linked from this page. Much of the route can be travelled by public transport and information about buses is also provided.