Which has largest diameter?
Large objects in our solar system Largest planet: Jupiter, roughly 88,846 miles (142,984 km) at its largest diameter, which is about 11 times the diameter of the Earth.
What is the diameter of Earth?
12,742 km
How do we measure the size of the Earth?
It was generally agreed upon that measuring the size of Earth could be done by measuring the altitude of a star from two cities situated on the same meridian. Then, a difference expressed in degrees would be found.
When was the size of the Earth First calculated?
By around 500 B.C., most ancient Greeks believed that Earth was round, not flat. But they had no idea how big the planet is until about 240 B.C., when Eratosthenes devised a clever method of estimating its circumference.
How did Eratosthenes estimate the size of the Earth?
Eratosthenes hired a man to pace the distance between the two cities and learned they were 5,000 stadia apart, which is about 800 kilometers. He could then use simple proportions to find the Earth’s circumference — 7.2 degrees is 1/50 of 360 degrees, so 800 times 50 equals 40,000 kilometers.
Who first measured the distance to the sun?
astronomer Aristarchus
How did we calculate the distance to the sun?
Aristarchus realized that when the Moon was exactly half illuminated, it formed a right triangle with the Earth and the Sun. Now knowing the distance between the Earth and the Moon, all he needed was the angle between the Moon and Sun at this moment to compute the distance of the Sun itself.
How did we calculate the distance to the moon?
There are two ways to measure the distance from the Earth to the Moon on your own: using a Lunar eclipse and using parallax. 270 BC) to determined that the Moon was round 60 Earth radii away (about 386,243 km or 240,000 miles). This is quite close to the currently accepted figure of 60.3 radii.
What is the size of the sun?
432,690 mi
How do we know the size of the sun?
The mean radius of the sun is 432,450 miles (696,000 kilometers), which makes its diameter about 864,938 miles (1.392 million km). You could line up 109 Earths across the face of the sun. The sun’s circumference is about 2,713,406 miles (4,366,813 km).