Do you remember the diagrams of the solar system in textbooks and the diagrams of bubble planets hanging neatly from the ceiling of elementary school classrooms?
The University of Arizona’s vast new facility is designed to provide a true view of our vast solar system.
The Arizona Scale Model Solar System is a collection of 10 informational signs that run from the Kuiper Space Science Building on the UA Mall to the main gate on the western edge of the campus.
Each symbol represents a planet or other celestial body, carefully arranged to reflect its relative position in its orbit around the Sun. Even at 1:5 billion scale, the display covers more than half a mile. It takes about 10 minutes to walk from the Sun to Neptune, and the real world (real space?) distance is about 2.8 billion miles.
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“It can be difficult to grasp the astronomical scale,” says Zara Brown, a Ph.D. student and project leader at UA’s Lunar and Planetary Institute.
The sign provides details about the mass, diameter, surface gravity, and temperature of each object in the solar system. These are illustrated in NASA images and artwork by Lunar and Planetary Institute alumnus James He Keane.
The permanent exhibition also serves as a tribute to the university’s significant contributions to planetary science. At each stop on the Solar System tour, visitors can read about his UA research related to that celestial body.
Brown said he had no trouble finding all the connections to Tucson he needed. “It was even harder to choose which ones to include,” she said.
celestial walk
There were signs of this happening in late August. The university hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the installation in front of the Kuiper Building on Friday.
There you have the sun shrunk to the size of a basketball, and the rest of the solar system interior, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, all clustered within about 40 feet of each other.
The distance increases as you move west along the UA mall and cross the asteroid belt. The constellations of Uranus and Neptune are two-tenths of a mile apart.
“This gives us an idea of how lonely and vast the outer solar system is, and why some of these bodies are understudied. They are more difficult to reach,” says Ph.D. Brown said as he finished his summary. A paper on Saturn’s upper atmosphere.
This Solar System Walking Tour was developed with the help of a multidisciplinary team that includes about 10 graduate researchers who helped create and compile the information on the signs. The exhibit was funded through his NASA Space Grant Fellowship awarded to Brown in 2020 and subsequently extended.
She said she has been fascinated by the size of the solar system ever since she first learned about it in elementary school.
As a child, he used a calculator and art supplies to try to draw the planets at the proper scale and distance, but had to give up his efforts when he found out that he would have to ask his father for several hundred dollars. Ta. more paper.
“It was shocking. There’s so much empty space all around us. What feels so big and important is actually so small,” Brown said. “This is something I’ve felt compelled to do for a long time.”
The Solar System exhibit is designed to serve as an educational tool for both UA students and campus visitors. As part of the project, Brown is drafting a lab exercise to help undergraduates conceptualize large numbers and vast distances by walking around the facility and doing calculations along the way.
road to there
Brown said the Venusian constellation contains a touch of “environmentalism,” in which a “runaway greenhouse effect” has made Venus hot enough to melt a human-made rover in minutes. said that
“The interaction between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere is the same process that occurs on Earth,” she said.
A QR code on each sign links to a website that can be used with a screen reader for the visually impaired. Brown hopes that one day the website will be expanded to include additional information about the UA’s role in the solar system and its exploration, as well as updates as new discoveries are made.
Placements were placed based on the average trajectory distance of each object, with minor adjustments made to ensure that signs were placed in safe and convenient locations.
“We fabricated Neptune,” Brown said. “It would be more appropriate to put it in the middle of Park Avenue.”
Instead, it is located just inside the volcanic rock wall of the main gate to Park and University Boulevard.
Eventually, the facility will expand approximately 700 feet off campus to include Pluto. Brown said he plans to place the sign near the corner of the university and Euclid Avenue once a legal agreement is completed with the Marshall Foundation, which owns most of Maingate Square’s commercial development.
“I think the debate about whether Pluto is a planet is great, so I decided to include it,” Brown said. “It excites people emotionally, but it can be difficult in some of the cosmic topics that people aren’t necessarily personally interested in. People have definite opinions about Pluto.” “
She said the demoted dwarf planet has such a strange and elongated orbit that its beacon could actually be placed as far as Time Market, another third of a mile west of University Boulevard. He added that there is.
And if that’s not surprising enough, consider this: If you want to include Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, the scale model would have to extend about 5,000 miles, Brown said. That said, this is about the same distance between Tucson and Glasgow, Scotland.
“One of the lessons someone can take from this model is that we are very precious little beings,” Brown said. “Why don’t we take care of our own home?” And why not treat each other a little better? All we really have is each other in this huge expanse of space. ”
Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@tucson.com or 573-4283. On Twitter: @RefriedBrean