This is an addition to a series that creates a model of the
Solar System across the Bay Area and the Central Valley of
California. The cache represents the asteroid designated 2060
Chiron, orbiting (mostly) between Saturn and Uranus. However,
this is not a planet, and does not have a code number.
The Sun was placed at City Plaza Park in downtown San Jose, and
Mercury one mile from that location. All the other planets have
been 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. Planet Earth is located approximately 2.56
miles away from the Sun and would have a diameter within this model
of 13.7".
2060 Chiron is the largest object within a secondary asteroid
belt (designated as "Centaurs") primarily between the orbits of
Saturn and Uranus, and was discovered in 1977. The Centaurs are
largely a transcient group, and computer modelling indicates that
Chiron is burning off gas similar to a comet. Indeed, Chiron is not
expected to last more than a few million years before it is pulled
out of its orbit by one of those planets. Some of our descendants
could easily see another encounter like Shoemaker-Levy. Chiron is
(on the average) located 38.42 miles away from the Sun on this
scale, and the asteroid itself would be 3/8 of an inch in
diameter.
The container itself is a camo'd bison tube. Please bring a pen
or pencil to record your find on the log sheet. There isn't room
for one in the cache container.
The cache is located near a busy intersection, so some stealth
will be required. There is plenty of nearby parking, with many
lightpoles (none of which actually contain the cache) for your
entertainment.
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 an extension of the series that bthomas
and myself have built. You only need to find the nine planets to
determine the location of the Halley's Comet Cache, but finding the
other objects as well can be a great deal 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.
