Take the first left after Venus, you can’t miss it.
Venus:
- Diameter: 5.2 inches
- Location: Budget Traveler Motor Inn (0.7 mile from Sun)
- Construction: Styrofoam ball with fiberglass cover
- Constructed by: Caribou Tech Center (Caribou High School)
- Painted by: Jeanie McGowan, Curator of Collections at the Northern Maine Museum of Science and student at the University of Maine at Presque Isle
- Posts constructed by: Northern Maine Technical College, Sonny Michaud and students
- Base constructed by David Tardie and his students, Loring Job Corps, Cement Mason Program
—Via MetaFilter, the coolest thing I’ve seen this morning: a 40-mile-long scale model of the solar system, from the Sun at the Northern Maine Museum of Science at Presque Isle, to Pluto (and Charon) outside the Houlton Information Center at the junction of Route 1 and Interstate 95. It’s the brainchild of Kevin McCartney, a professor of geology at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, and it was constructed pretty much entirely of donated materials and volunteer labor on a budget of zip, zero, zilch. Here’s the Smithsonian’s write-up:
Just now, newspaper ad sales manager Jim Berry is drilling a hole in Saturn’s post and remembering his first encounter with McCartney at a Kiwanis Club meeting. “I went home that night and said to my wife, ‘I met this guy today. He’s a wacko. You can’t believe what he’s going to try to do.’ “ When he got up the next morning he said, “Wait a minute. This is a great idea. I’ve got to get involved in this. This is just too good to pass up.”
McCartney has that effect on people; one day they think he’s crazy, the next day they’re painting Jupiter’s spot. His list of prominent “squirrels,” as he inexplicably calls his volunteers, runs eight pages long. Add the anonymous students who worked on a planet here or a stanchion there, and McCartney estimates that more than 500 squirrels have pitched in so far. Perley Dean, a retired Presque Isle High School guidance counselor who wears a “Maine Potato Board” baseball cap, got the job of persuading several landowners that what was missing on their property was a planet. “Many of them don’t stay up late at night reading about the galaxy,” Dean deadpans.
To infinity and beyond!
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Did you know there was one of these in Portland? I thought that was what this article was about before I clicked through.
It's not as relevent because much of the stuff has moved (most notably, the sun was in OMSI, which has since relocated), but I always thought it was cool.
Nah, I had no idea! The Smithsonian write-up mentions a couple of others, but not one in Portland. You know where the bits of it are these days?
There's a similar such solar system in Greater Boston. The sun is at the Museum of Science and Pluto's out in Newton past 95/128.
Slightly smaller than Maine's, both size of models and distance are at a "1-to- 400 million scale (where 1 inch equals 6,215 miles or 10,000 km)" but this one's been around for at least five years now.