xkcd / Randall Munroe

A fantastic map from webcomic artist Randall Munroe shows the relative surface areas of all the rocky planets and moons in the solar system as though they were continents branching off from the oceans of Earth. The map, entitled "Surface Area" on Munroe's site xkcd.com, is a wonderful visualization of the relative sizes of all the major solid bodies in the solar system presented as a familiar world map.

You might have heard, for example, that Jupiter's moon Ganymede and Saturn's moon Titan are both individually larger than the planet Mercury. Munroe, who worked for NASA as a programmer and roboticist before becoming a full-time webcomic artist, has created a map that is a great way to visualize those planetary size differences, and also offers the advantage of comparing entire planets to Earth continents. You can quickly see how Jupiter's moon Europa dwarfs the continent Europe, having about the same surface area as Africa, while Saturn's little moon Enceladus is hardly bigger than Japan.

It's a wide world out there—er, solar system.

Source: xkcd.com

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