The Chainlink

Hey Chainlinkers,

I'm Lucianne, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium. I wanted to let you know about a cool bikes-and-astronomy education roadshow we're doing, which I thought might be of interest to folks here: the Adler Galaxy Ride! From 9/18-25, I and a few of my Adler colleagues will be riding our bikes to space. Just kidding, we're actually riding from Chicago to St Louis, BUT we will be mapping out cosmic distance and destinations along the way. At each stop, we'll be doing a pop-up astronomy education event, with fun demos and Q&A-- and those events are free and open to all! You can read more about the event and check out our destinations (both in Illinois and in space) here: http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/events/galaxy-ride

If you know people along our route, please tell them to come by and say hi! You will also be able to follow us and track our progress on social media-- just check the website above, follow @AdlerPlanet on Twitter or search for the #AdlerGalaxyRide tag. 

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About 20 years ago, I was at a friends house working on their computer.  Their son was considering doing a solar system model for high school class.  Distances and sizes to the same scale.  At the time I said it would be very hard to do.  If something was big enough to be seen without a microscope, it would be miles away on the distance scale.  There is a bicycle trail in Peoria with a scale model of the Solar system, and someone was riding, so I set up a spreadsheet with the Sun, Planets, Dwarf planets, and Moons (over 400 km diameter (.4 mm to scale)).  Looking at Pluto, I decided on a 1 billion to 1 scale.  Makes the Sun 1.392 meters 54.80 inches wide, Earth 0.013 m 0.50 in at 0.150 km, Jupiter 0.143 m 5.63 in at 0.778 km, Pluto 0.003 meters at 5.906 km 3.670 miles, and Eris 0.002 m at 12.210 km 6.344 miles.  Get a weather balloon for the sun and one placard for each planet and place along the trail.

Object Radius km Diameter In Orbit km Distance mi Mass E Satellites
SUN 696,000 54.80 0 0.000 332,946.00000 8P,5DP
Mercury 2,440 0.19 57,909,175 0.036 0.05500 0
Venus 6,052 0.48 108,208,930 0.067 0.81500 0
Earth 6,378 0.50 149,597,930 0.093 1.00000 1
*Moon 1,737 0.14 362,600 0.000 0.01230
Mars 3,397 0.27 227,936,640 0.142 0.10700 2
Ceres 471 0.04 413,700,000 0.257 0.00016 0
Jupiter 71,493 5.63 778,412,010 0.484 318.00000 67
*Io 1,830 0.14 421,700 0.000
*Europa 1,561 0.12 671,034 0.000
*Ganymede 2,631 0.21 1,070,412 0.001
*Callisto 2,411 0.19 1,882,709 0.001
Saturn 60,267 4.75 1,426,725,400 0.887 95.00000 62
*Enceladus 252 0.02 237,950 0.000
*Tethys 531 0.04 294,619 0.000
*Dione 562 0.04 377,396 0.000
*Rhea 764 0.06 527,108 0.000
*Titan 2,576 0.20 1,221,930 0.001
Uranus 25,557 2.01 2,870,972,200 1.784 14.00000 27
*Miranda 236 0.02 129,390 0.000
*Ariel 579 0.05 191,020 0.000
*Umbriel 585 0.05 266,300 0.000
*Titania 789 0.06 435,910 0.000
*Oberon 762 0.06 583,520 0.000
Neptune 24,766 1.95 4,498,252,900 2.795 17.00000 14
*Triton 1,353 0.11 354,759 0.000
Pluto 1,184 0.09 5,906,380,000 3.670 0.00220 5
*Charon 604 0.05 17,536 0.000
Haumea 650 0.05 6,484,000,000 4.029 0.00070 2
Makemake 715 0.06 6,850,000,000 4.256 0.00030 0
Eris 1,163 0.09 10,210,000,000 6.344 0.00280 1
*Dysnomia 342 0.03 37,350 0.000

Sounds like a neat idea!

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