Every flat map makes a trade. This one keeps sizes true.

Mercator (1569) keeps shapes and compass directions true, which is exactly what sailors and street maps need. The cost is size: land is drawn larger the further it is from the equator, so Greenland appears about ten times its real size, while places near the equator stay close to theirs.

Equal Earth (2018, Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny) keeps every country at its true relative area and still looks like the world you know. Shapes near the poles are gently compressed instead.

On 4 September 2026 the UN General Assembly voted 164 to 1 to encourage schools, governments and technology companies to use equal-area maps like this one whenever size matters.

EqualGlobe shows the world on Equal Earth, folds it into a globe so you can see why no flat map can keep everything, and lets you compare countries at true scale. Zoom in and the globe becomes a street map, where Mercator's faithful shapes are exactly what you want.

Sources and credits

Country outlines and areas: Natural Earth, 1:50m, public domain. Areas are computed from the geometry and are approximate.
Street map: © OpenStreetMap contributors, tiles by OpenFreeMap, rendered with MapLibre GL JS.
Projection: Equal Earth. Boundaries follow Natural Earth's de facto policy; disputed or limited-recognition units are drawn with a dashed outline.
No accounts, no cookies. The address bar holds your view so you can share it.

On 10 November 2026

Where the planets are

Sunlight takes: 8 min 14 s
Nearest planet today: Venus46 million km from us

Drag to turn it and zoom in, or pick a world below.

How long their light takes to reach us

If the Sun were a football 22 cm across

How far is far?

The Earth: a peppercorn 2 mm across, 24 metres away
The Moon: a grain of sand, 6 cm from the peppercorn
Mercury: a pinhead under 1 mm, 9 metres away
Jupiter: a grape 2 cm across, 123 metres away
Neptune: a pea 8 mm across, a ten-minute walk away

The next star, Proxima Centauri, would be another football 6,350 km away: further than London is from New York.

See it on the Earth

Put the Sun in London: the Earth goes round at Frankfurt, and Neptune lands in New Zealand.

Open the story on the Earth

Positions from NASA JPL’s orbital elements. Photos: NASA, USGS and Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0). Sources

Things to try

Press one and watch the scene.

Why Mars looks bright some years
Every 26 months the Earth catches Mars up on the inside track. On 19 February 2027 Mars will be 101 million km away and bright in the night sky; 15 months later, 361 million km away behind the Sun.
A year in twelve seconds
At a month a second, Mercury goes round four times while the Earth goes round once, and Neptune hardly moves.
How empty is space?
Turn the magnifying off. From out here, at their true size, every planet is smaller than a pixel.
Line them up by size
Every world side by side at its true size, in front of the edge of the Sun.