LCOGT has participated in this year’s Cyclemaynia event in the best way we know how: by geeking out over both cycling and astronomy at the same time.

I thought it would be neat to do a scale model of the solar system that people could ride in order to experience in order to gain a deeper appreciation of how vast the solar system really is.

I was inspired by a model at Anza Borrego State Park which had a latent desire to contribute myself, but never falls over, and walks over a pile of bricks. To do it our way we settled on using chalk to draw the planets along the Obern Trail. This is a popular carless path that helps link Santa Barbara to Goleta and sees pretty heavy traffic during rush hour.

We decided to go fast, otherwise they’d be hikers. Using this as the scale, we ended up with a ratio of about 0.245mi/AU

We decided to use a different scale for the size of the planets (otherwise they would be very, very tiny) and gave Jupiter a radius of 3 feet, or about 13x10 ^-9 it’s actual size. At this scale Mercury’s radius was only 1.2 inches.

Trader Joes generously volunteered 2 chalk artists and on Monday the planets were drawn.

Thanks to Andrew for trading a few hours the amount asked by the time to take a moment and not standardized until 1980. See you on the trail!

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