What does the Solar System look like?
You've probably seen plenty of images showing our Solar System. However, these don't normally show the Solar System as it would really appear to your own eyes. That's because if you were looking at the Solar System in real life, everything would be too small, faint and/or far apart to see. Artist impressions of the Solar System exaggerate the sizes of planets and put them much closer to each other than they really are, so you can see them.
In real life, the Solar System looks pretty much the same as the night sky that we see from Earth. Indeed, when you look at the night sky, you're seeing a large part of the Solar System. Most of what you see is outside the Solar System but you're also seeing some of the things in it.
The image below is a simulated view of how the Solar System looks from the "outside". The brightest star is the Sun, and that's about the only obvious thing you'll see. Some of the planets look like stars, others are too faint to see.
The next image shows where the gas giant planets are. You can see Jupiter and Saturn but Uranus and Neptune are too faint. The inner planets are too close to the Sun to be easily visible.
The last image shows the orbits of the planets. Notice how close the inner planets are to the Sun—you can barely see their orbits.
