Filmmakers build scale-size replica of solar system in Nevada desert [Video]

A group of friends have built a replica of the solar system that is actually to scale. A short and poignant documentary from Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh shows the US pair and their friends utilising 11km of open space in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to give a better perspective of the solar system.

"Every single picture of the solar system that we ever encounter is not to scale," Overstreet says in the video. "If you put the orbits to scale on a piece of paper, the planets become microscopic and you won't be able to see them. There is literally not an image that adequately shows you what it actually looks like from out there."

The team then set about building a replica of our solar system, with the planet's orbits, the distance between them and the perspective from each world true to scale. On his website, Overstreet describes it as a "three dimensional scale model of the solar system, complete with planetary orbits − the only way to see what our place in the cosmos actually looks like."