Lakeview isn’t just a Museum and Planetarium – it’s also the Sun! The Museum’s Solar System model is scaled to the size of the Planetarium and stretches over 2,000 square miles in central Illinois, making this the largest Solar System model in the world. The Sun is represented on the east wing of Lakeview Museum. Planets are sized to scale, based on a 36-foot Sun, and placed in orbit to scale up to 60 miles away (to the dwarf planet Eris), offering a unique Earthbound concept of the vastness of space.

In Lakeview Museum’s unique model of the Sun and its 8 planets, both size and distance are represented on the same scale (42 feet = 1 million miles or 1 meter = 1.3x105 kilometers). For example, if the Sun really were only 36 feet wide, Earth would be just 4 inches wide and ¾ of a mile away! In contrast, Saturn’s rings are 7 and a half feet wide to scale.

Saturn, the sixth planet from the Sun, in our scale would be 38 inches in diameter with 90 inch diameter rings and 8 miles from the Sun (Lakeview Planetarium).