This is a supplement to a series that creates a model of the
Solar System across the Bay Area and the Central Valley of
California. However, this is not one of the original nine
planets, and does not have a code number.
The Sun was placed at City Plaza Park in downtown San Jose, and
Mercury was placed one mile from that location. All the other
planets were placed in orbit at distances from San Jose that match
the scale set with the planet Mercury. With this scale, Pluto is
just a bit over 100 miles away. Earth, the closest planet cache to
this location, is located approximately 2.56 miles away from the
Sun and would have a diameter within this model of 13.7 inches. The
Moon would be 39' 10" away from the Earth, and would be about three
inches in diameter.
The Earth originally formed about 4.6 billion years ago without
a moon. Perhaps 100 million years after the Earth started forming,
an object about the size of Mars collided with the Earth at a
slight angle.
The object itself was vaporized, but debris from the Earth's
crust found a stable orbit, and eventually lumped together to form
the Moon.
Evidence of this theory is supported by the lack of an iron core
within the Moon, and the fact that the Moon seems to be comprised
almost entirely of material similar to the crust of the Earth.
When the Moon first formed, the orbital period was only a few
hours. Over the millenia the Moon's orbital distance has increased,
and the orbital period is now about 28.5 days. The fact that this
period continues to (very slowly) increase will eventually lead to
the demise of the Moon. Sometime in the future the Moon will begin
to rotate on it's axis faster than it orbits the Earth, and this
rotation will eventually cause it to collapse and break apart.
Perhaps two billion years from now the Earth will have a large ring
system similar to Saturn's, where the Moon used to be.
The container itself is a standard bison tube. Please bring a
pen or pencil to record your find on the log sheet. The cache is
located off a surface street. You can park close to the cache, but
be careful of the many prying eyes nearby, so stealth will be
required.
Please consider visiting the other caches in the
Northern California Solar System Model. You'll note that there
are now other types of objects listed, as well as planets. These
are extensions of the series that bthomas
and I have built. You only need to find the original nine planets
to determine the location of the Halley's Comet Cache, but finding
the other objects as well can be lots of fun.
You can look at a map of the locations of all of the planets in
this cache series by examining this map.
Thanks to fizzymagic
for the map. Thanks to Buxley
for information on the planet diameters with this scale model. Many
thanks to
TeamJiffy for creating this series. And a final thank you to
mophab for teaching me about putting these pages together.
And if you should ever stop to gaze upon
Luna, please take a moment to think about
motogrrl while doing so.