• Home
  • News
    • Politics / Govt
    • Legislature
    • Crime / Courts
    • Health / Medicine
    • Archives
  • Sports
    • Badgers
    • Packers
      • Titletown Report
    • Brewers
  • Contact Us
    • Reporters
  • Affiliates
    • Affiliate Support

Wisconsin Radio Network

Wisconsin News and Sports

You are here: Home / News / Planet Trek gives a sense of solar system's scale

Planet Trek gives a sense of solar system's scale

May 25, 2009 By WRN Contributor

Jupiter on the Planet Trek Dane County trail You can ride your bike through the solar system in Wisconsin this summer. Call it a combination of outdoor recreation and science education. Jim Lattis, director of UW-Madison's Space Place, says Planet Trek utilizes the Dane County trials system to represent eleven major objects in the solar system, at a scale of 1-to-200-million.

"The smallest object we represent, which is the largest of the asteroids, now called the dwarf planet Ceres, is only the size of a peppercorn," explains Lattis. "At that scale though, we had to put Pluto in Mount Horeb, about twenty three and a half miles from the Sun, which we located at Monona Terrace."

Lattis says that sort of scale gives a much more realistic sense of the solar system than anything on the printed page. "It begins to dawn on you how vast the space is, and in what sort of huge regions of space those lonely planets are orbiting out there," he says. There's a Planet Trek event on June 20th, with guided tours of the inner planets, not too far from the Sun at Monona Terrace, or for the adventurous, all the way out to Pluto in Mount Horeb.

"One of the things that we thought would be interesting about this project is that it's sort of a combination of science outreach with outdoor recreation," Lattis says. "A way to make a recreational, physical activity have a science education component to it." And not just as astronomy, as the taking the tral all the way to Mount Horeb will take Planet Trekkers past lakes and wetlands as well.

AUDIO: Bob Hague interview (7:30 MP3)

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Filed Under: News



Featured Stories

Evers delivers State of the State address

Abortion rights rally highlights Wisconsin Supreme Court race

Bail and benefits questions will be on Wisconsin’s April statewide ballot

Evers issues promised TikTok ban

Johnson, Baldwin both vote ‘yes’ to avert rail strike

TwitterFacebook

Sports Headlines

Giannis breaks franchise scoring record, Bucks beat Nets in OT

Wisconsin’s Davis declares for NBA Draft

Badgers to face Arizona State in Las Vegas Bowl

Williams likely out for the season with broken hand

Packers releasing TE Jace Sternberger

More Sports

Tweets by @WRN

Get our news delivered to your inbox:

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Copyright © 2023 · Learfield News & Ag, LLC