Reckoning that Neptune is the outermost planet of the solar system,
that system would have a diameter of 5,584 millions of miles.

If we made a chart of the solar system on a scale of 1 inch to a
million miles, we should need a sheet of paper 465 feet 4 inches
wide. On this sheet the Sun would have a diameter of less than 1
inch, and the Earth would be about the size of a pin-prick.

If an express train, going at 60 miles an hour, had to travel round
the Earth's orbit, it would be more than 1,000 years on the journey.
If the Earth moved no faster, our winter would last more than 250
years. But in the solar system the speeds are as wonderful as the
sizes. The Earth turns upon its axis at the rate of 1,000 miles an
hour, and travels in its orbit round the Sun at the rate of more
than 1,000 miles a minute, or 66,000 miles an hour.

So much for the size of the solar system. It consists of a Sun and
eight planets, and the outer planet's orbit is one of 5,584 millions
of miles in diameter, which it would take an express train, at 60
miles an hour, 10,560 years to cross.

But this distance is as nothing when we come to deal with the distances
of the other stars from our Sun.

The distance from our Sun to the nearest fixed (?) star is more than
20 millions of millions of miles. Our express train, which crosses
the diameter of the solar system in 10,560 years, would take, if it
went 60 miles an hour day and night, about 40 million years to reach
the nearest fixed star from the Sun.