This has been reproduced from the “Wait But Why” blog post about SpaceX’s plans to establish a human colony on mars, it is an extremely interesting article, containing the following as an aside. It has been edited for continuity and a younger audiance.

Relative Planet Distances

We’re about to head much farther away from the sun, so let’s put these distances in context. To do that, you can divide the Solar System into three roughly equal thirds, each about 1 billion miles, or 10 AU long (an AU is the distance from the sun to the Earth):

1st third: Sun to Saturn 2nd third: Saturn to Uranus 3rd third: Uranus to Neptune6

So if the Solar System is a yard long, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune lie at the end of each of the three feet. Jupiter is 6 inches (about 5 AU) from the sun, cutting the first third in half, and the other four are all crunched into the first two inches of the first foot: