[X] My Assistant

[Stu]

Thanks Alan, I just didn't have the time to check that today.

[brellis]

Every time I hear news about Oppy and Spirit, my amazement expands, prolly at the same rate as the expansion of the universe!

[ElkGroveDan]

Stu, if you find something on your scale that works out to be 5000 miles away, I'll sit out on my back porch in California holding it for a live webcam.

[Stu]

Deal, Dan!

[djellison]

Sirius is at 5108.5 miles

[AndyG]

Sirius is at 5108.5 miles

Excellent! And a wee white dwarf companion 300 metres away from EGD would be a bonus!

Andy

[ElkGroveDan]

Sirius is at 5108.5 miles

That is amazing. Not knowing the exact location Stu is using I measured from my home to the center of Kendal and got 5071. Unfortunately another 38 miles along that azimuth (314.07) would put me in the San Francisco Bay Delta, which is significantly damper than the Eberswalde Delta. So we may have to call 5071 close enough.

[nprev]

Hmm. Might be redundant here, but how far away is Procyon on this scale? IIRC, it & Sirius are actually fairly close together (not more than 2 ly apart or so). I think that the distance between Dan & me might be too small for that scale distance, though (around 350 mi.)

[Stu]

Loving the interest in and support for this project, thanks everyone! Having umsf members taking part across the world would be brilliant! I'm a bit puzzled by the 5000ish km figure that's come up for Sirius tho, as it doesn't tally with what I've got. The figures I'm using can be found here, if anyone wants a look...

http://ksssm2.wordpress.com/figures

Input from anyone and everyone appreciated, re the figures, if I've made any howling mistakes. Important to remember tho that this is very much a fun, informal amateur, project aimed at giving members of the public a general view of the solar system's scale, and not an attempt to recreate it as professionally or as accurately as, say, a museum or planetarium might, so it's not going to be absolutely precise. If, as I'm hoping, the local council are so impressed by our efforts that they ask us to make it a permanent feature then I'll get a GPS and measure it out to the millimetre, but on Aug 14th it will be less formal. We'll do our best, but this is just a bit of fun.

[djellison]

Ahh - the Sun has grown from the 140mm of last year, so the 5108 miles won't be right.

[AndyG]

Yes - it looks like the 1*10^10 scale (which, let's face it, is a bit digitally humanocentric) has been booted in favour of an odder number.

Andy

[Stu]

To be honest, the only "scale" - odd or otherwise - is "do what you have to to make everything fit into the length of the path, so people don't get run over by a car whilst trying to cross the road to get to Pluto"

[Phil Stooke]

"* The total distance walked by Neil Armstrong on the Moon (Phil? Help me out here :-) ) "

Only just noticed this... goood question. I've never seen a breakdown by individual astronaut. 'Apollo by the Numbers' says about 1000 m for Apollo 11 EVA, both astronauts combined. That might be a bit high, it can't be more than a very rough estimate. They use the same figure for Apollo 12 EVA 1.

Since the greatest distance reached from the LM on Apollo 11 was about 60 m (Armstrong to Little West Crater), or 120 m round trip, I might guess 500 m for Armstrong, and a bit less for Aldrin. But it's very uncertain.

Phil

[Stu]

Thanks Phil, the 60m figure is a good one to work with, I'll probably go with that. Appreciate the input.

[ElkGroveDan]

Loving the interest in and support for this project, thanks everyone! Having umsf members taking part across the world would be brilliant! I'm a bit puzzled by the 5000ish km figure that's come up for Sirius tho, as it doesn't tally with what I've got.

MILES, Stu. Doug and I were talking about MILES.

Maybe you should include the distance that the Mars Climate Orbiter dipped into Martian atmosphere before the overheated thrusters failed and it soared off into solar orbit.