Have you ever wanted to travel to Neptune? Thanks to an updated solar system model on campus, you can 鈥渧isit鈥 the planet as you stroll from the Fiske Planetarium north to Colorado Avenue鈥攋ust a few minutes if you hustle. You can also catch the sounds of Neptune and other planets and asteroids as they go whooshing by on your smartphone.
This week on December 8, 2021, Fiske Planetarium and Sommers-Bausch Observatory is unveiling the next generation of the Colorado Scale Model Solar System, plus an associated smartphone app that sets out to 鈥渟onify鈥 Earth鈥檚 cosmic neighborhood.
The model solar system, which has delighted campus visitors since 1987, squishes space down by about 10 billion times. Earth, which has a diameter of 7,917 miles, is now roughly the size of a pepper grain. You start off near the planetarium where a grapefruit-sized sphere represents the sun, then walk for about a third of a mile, passing exhibits for all eight planets on the way.
Graduate student James Negus helped bring the new model to campus. It鈥檚 based on a model developed by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education called the Voyage Mark II. The installation shows visitors just how big space is, filled with vast distances that are hard for textbooks to capture. 澳门开奖结果2023开奖记录 faculty members John Keller and Seth Hornstein helped Negus make it all a reality. Read more...