Schematic illustration showing the scale of the Solar System compared to Europe. Imagine that the Sun were reduced to a diameter of 1 kilometre (km) ??a reduction factor of 1.4 million. If we placed the Sun in the middle of London, UK, then the orbit of the outermost planet, Neptune, would pass through north-eastern Cyprus, 3240 km away, while Uranus would intersect the north of Iceland. Compared to our 1 km Sun, the planets would range in diameter from 3.5 metres (Mercury) to 100.4 metres (Jupiter). (The planets are shown to scale with respect to each other, but not with respect to their orbits.)