A few days ago, my local newspaper, The Gainesville Sun, featured a short article about Solar Walk, which is a series of sculptures lining the south side of NW 8th Avenue, going eastward from NW 34th Street and ending at NW 23rd Street. These sculptures comprise a scaled-down outdoors Solar System planetarium starting with the Sun and then progressively arriving at each planet until, approaching NW 23nd Street, the last planet Pluto stands (I still call it a planet). Now
Elizabeth Indianos, the artist responsible for this intriguing Gainesville landmark, has added two comets to the sculptures. The one closer to the Sun features a streaming gas tail, while the more remote one doesn’t.
I went out on NW 8th Avenue to get a closer look and some photos. In the process I ran from the Sun all the way past Pluto (about 0.9 mile). Since the objects are scaled according to their orbits' relative distances from each other, it gave me a strong impression of how vast the distances are between the outer planets.
Here are some shots of Solar Walk:
Very cool! That's much nicer than the similar thing along the National Mall at the Smithsonian Institution in DC. They start the Sun at 4th St and Jefferson Dr, the corner by the National Air and Space Museum. I don't remember where all the planets end up, but I think you get to Earth before the main entrance to the Air & Space Museum, and don't find Pluto until you're at the Castle. Or something about like that.
ReplyDeleteBut the planets are just steel markers with plaques, nothing as neat or artistic as the stuff in your pictures.
Oh, wait, I can probably find the Smithsonian one with a Google search. Yes, here it is. And here's more of the one in Gainesville, and here's a list of others.
Thanks for taking me by there. It is eye-opening to see graphically the distance between planets, especially the ones so far from the sun.
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