I produced this infographic for my kids.
It’s heavily inspired by Valentina D’Efilippo’s visualizations in Britannica’s Encyclopedia Infographica, which they enjoy. The infographic is very long on purpose to really accentuate the hugeness of the distances. We view it by stretching the image across three monitors.
Most of this was made with Excel (lollipop chart), and then finished off with Illustrator. The typeface is Avenir Next, which is very close to that used in Encyclopedia Infographica (if not the exact one).
Spacecraft distances come from Heavens Above, an astronomy website hosted by the German space contractor of the same name together with the German Aerospace Center. Planet distances come from NASA’s planetary factsheet. Dwarf planet distances also come from NASA, found in the Small-Body Database.
I posted an early version to Instagram in carousel format.
I posted a more polished version to Reddit in carousel format, where it was viewed 217,000 times and shared over 340 times.