Posted on 12/21/2019 7:03:50 AM PST by RideForever
For the second year in a row, the Friends of Galileo astronomy club invites the public to a celebration of the longest night of the year — and a return to longer days — with a walk along the granite solar system model at Lake Sacajawea Saturday.
The free, two-hour, rain-or-shine event starts at 7 p.m. at the south (15th Avenue) end of Lake Sacajawea Park. Saturday is the date of the winter solstice, which marks the longest night of year. From then until late June, days will grow longer and nights will get shorter.
Participants are invited to walk the 1.64-mile route along the west (Nichols Boulevard) side of the lake. They’ll start at the granite marker representing the sun and walk all the way to the granite marker representing Pluto, located near the Ocean Beach Highway end of the lake. Along the way, they can get passports stamped at each of the granite markers representing each planet in the solar system, plus two other stops.
Representatives of local groups will greet walkers at each planet.
Participants should bring lanterns, flashlights or headlamps. Two “Space shuttle” vans provided by Columbia Ford will service the route to help participants unable to make the return walk back to the starting point.
The club estimates that 400 to 500 people participated in last year’s inaugural event.
This year’s participating organizations and their locations are The Friends of Galileo (The Sun); Kelso Freemasons Lodge 94 (Mercury); Girl Scouts of Western Washington (Venus); Three River Christian School (Earth); Shinju Dojo Aikido (Mars); Longview Freemasons Lodge 263 (Jupiter); Kelso/Longview Elks Lodge 1482 (Saturn); Boy Scouts of America Cascade Pacific Council (Uranus); Piano Studio of Martin Kauble (Statue of Lake Sacajawea at the foot bridge); Mount St. Helens Hiking Club (Neptune); Columbia River Reader (Comet Swift-Tuttle) near Maple Street north of Louisiana Street Bridge; and the Rose City Astronomers of Portland (Pluto).
Friends of Galileo installed the solar system walk in 2001. It is scaled to the relative size and distances between the planets and the sun. So the first four granite planet markers — those for Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars — are all within the first 300 feet of one another, while those of the bigger outer planets are greater. The distance from the sun to Pluto is about 3.7 billion miles.
It would be a good solution to the homeless problem. Space the food/shelter 10 miles apart. Make the walk. Make it 20.
It will probably be cloudy there.
and to continue the walk ... our galaxy has about 300 billion stars and it is known that each star has at least one planet ... the second part of the walk will take a while longer than the first. The third part will begin later on, be sure to bring a picnic lunch or two as we will be walking through the over 51 trillion known galaxies ... perhaps we will find a few more galaxies along the way.
Is Pluto back in the club?
3.67 billion mile walk?
* picture of scared Peloton lady here *
Is Pluto back in the club?
A lot of towns in the Midwest were founded about 10 miles apart. Basically a day’s round trip for a horse and buggy.
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