Introducing the Adler Galaxy Ride!

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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Permalink Reply by Mike Schwab on September 2, 2015 at 10:08am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Schwab on September 2, 2015 at 10:10am

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