THE EARTH, THE PLANET on which we live, seems huge to us. The Sun seems to be the most important object in the sky. This is only because humans are so small, and because the Earth orbits so close t the Sun. Our home planet is actually quite small as planets go, and th Sun is really just a very ordinary, unspectacular star. The next neares star is 7,000 times further away than our Sun. If you could drive non-stop around the Earth at a steady 60 km (37 miles) per hour, the journey would take just under a month. Even at the speed of an airliner, 800 km (500 miles) per hour, it would take 21 years to travel the distance from the Earth to the Sun. To travel from one side of the Solar System to the other, across the diameter of the orbit of Pluto would take more than 1,600 years at this speed