Scale: 10¹⁰ meters = 10 Gm = 10 gigameters

Four Days in July

The ellipse in the center square represents the orbit of the Moon. Earth itself is smaller than a single pixel at the center of the Moon's orbit. The Earth/Moon system moves along this section of Earth's orbit in 4 or 5 days during the month of July. The Moon's orbit appears elliptical rather than circular because we are approaching the Earth from above San Francisco rather than above the north pole of Earth. If these images are being displayed as 10 cm on a side, the Sun would be nearly 1 1/2 meters away to the lower right. In four days, the Moon would move through 1/7 of its orbit about the Earth.