I swear I get more questions about objects that are planets than I do anything else.

Oh, and by the way, the bright star you’re seeing in the morning, on the way to work, is Venus.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I posted here. The time has flown by! In case any of you actually missed me, I’ve been very busy over at 2012hoax.org.

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Then I painted the moon a gray that my wife had in her craft paints, and  also painted the ‘Earth’ to vaguely resemble a globe.  I can’t say that I’m an artist.  If I work really hard, I may someday be good enough to be fired from a sweatshop operation in China.

To use this I’ll be using a pair of spring clamps, and a yardstick (or reasonable approximation thereof).  The proper distance between the Earth and Moon at this scale turns out to be 30 inches.

I really wanted to make the scale model of the Solar System as outlined in “Worlds of the Solar System” activity on the NASA Night Sky Network, but the materials for it turned out to be much more difficult to obtain than I anticipated.

You can in fact order ‘Dylite’ (a.k.a. ‘Smoothfoam’) balls in various sizes… if you are willing to order multiple units.  I don’t want twelve of the  1 & 3/8 inch balls, I want two!  The local crafting store has a very limited selection of these.  I could get the 4-inch ball but not the 3 & 7/8 inch one.  Plus, they’re expensive!

So, a different solution needed to be found.

Being pressed for time, and unable to find the materials, I resorted to rendering the model in 2D instead of 3D.   In the PDF file is a handout page with correctly scaled pictures of the planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune).  Dwarf planets need not apply, apparently, but they are too small to be made in this 2D model anyway.

In order to accomplish my project, I printed two copies of the handout page in color.  I then used a glue stick to glue the back of the planets (before I cut them out) and pasted each sheet onto cardstock (a file-folder would work here too).  After letting them dry for a while, I then used scissors and a craft knife to cut out the pictures.

At this point, I had two pictures of each planet.  I quickly learned in the next step that the smallest planets (Mercury and Mars) are too small to do this next step.  The larger planets worked fine, and the larger rocky planets (Earth and Venus) could go either way .

The next step is to glue the two pictures of each planet together around bamboo Shish Kabob skewers (which I stole from the drawer in our kitchen).  For this step I recommend using ordinary white glue.  It wouldn’t work on regular weight paper, but on the cardstock it softened it up enough to mold the cardstock around the skewers.  This works great for the gas giant planets.

When I got down to Venus and Earth, however, it was much more difficult because of the small sizes of the circles.  When I got down to Mars, it was impossible.  I resorted to using a single cut-out, and placing a drop of glue on the back, then laying the tapered tip of the skewer into the glue.   I repeated this for Mercury.

In retrospect, this would work well for Venus and Earth as well.  If you wanted to, there is really no reason why the planets have to be double-sided, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

I used the label page printed on plain paper, and glued the labels around the skewers using a glue stick.

I’m actually fairly proud of the result.

When we admired Saturn through the telescope, I was dumbfounded. I had never really seen Saturn before I guess. It was so perfectly round and so black-and-white bright that it looked, as my friend Sue put it, “like a sticker on the lens.” A postcard perfect Saturn.

All I can say is get back up here on one of the next two weekends (August 22 or August 29) because after Labor Day the observatory may not be there anymore.

Yet, on the last day we know we will be open, I’m giving a program for a boy scout troop up at the observatory for their astronomy merit badge.  I’ve got a full afternoon planned, from 13:00 to 17:00, followed by the public program beginning at 20:00.  We’re going to be looking at star charts, making planispheres, and building a scale model of the solar system.

Doesn’t Fremont Peak provide more benefit than just being a ‘state park’?  Doesn’t the observatory go well beyond just letting people look through the telescope?

Our media briefing on August 22nd begins at 17:00 at the peak.  Any of you who care to support FPOA can drop me a note in comments, and I’ll pass it along to the board and have it presented at the media briefing.

Thanks in advance.