Northern Maine’s Aroostook County hosts a
40-mile long scale model of the Solar System. At this scale, one
mile along U.S. Route 1 equals the distance from the Earth to the
Sun, known as an “astronomical unit.” The sun is located at the
Northern Maine Museum of Science in Folsom Hall on the campus of
the University of Maine at Presque Isle; Pluto can be seen at the
Houlton Information Center, just north of the Interstate 95
interchange. The remaining eight planets are visible at their scale
locations along Route 1 as follows:
(Planet --- South Bound Distance(North Bound Distance))
Sun
--- 0.0 miles (40.1 miles)
Mercury --- 0.4 miles (39.7 miles)
Venus
--- 0.7 miles (39.4 miles)
Earth
--- 1.0 miles (39.1 miles)
Mars
--- 1.6 miles (38.9 miles)
Asteroids --- 2.7 miles (37.4 miles)
Jupiter --- 5.2 miles (34.9 miles)
Saturn --- 9.7 miles (30.4 miles)
Uranus --- 19.5 miles (12.6 miles)
Neptune --- 31.0 miles (9.1 miles)
Pluto
--- 40.1 miles (0.0 miles)
Visit the Solar System webpage at:
"http://www.umpi.maine/info/nmms/solar">www.umpi.maine/info/nmms/solar
Jupiter is the
fifth planet from the Sun and is the largest one in the solar
system. If Jupiter were hollow, more than one thousand Earths could
fit inside. It also contains more matter than all of the other
planets combined.
Jupiter is
usually the fourth brightest object in the sky (after the Sun, the
Moon and Venus); however at times Mars appears brighter than
Jupiter. Jupiter is 2.5 times more massive than all the other
planets combined, so massive that its barycenter with the Sun
actually lies above the Sun's surface (1.068 solar radii from the
Sun's center). It is 318 times more massive than Earth, with a
diameter 11 times that of Earth, and a volume 1408 times that of
Earth. Quite naturally, Jupiter's gravitational influence has
dominated the evolution of the solar system: most planets' orbits
lie closer to Jupiter's orbital plane than the Sun's equatorial
plane, the majority of short-period comets belong to Jupiter's
family (a result due to both Jupiter's mass and its relative
speed), the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt are mostly due to
Jupiter, and Jupiter is even thought to have been possibly
responsible for the late heavy bombardment of the inner solar
system's history. Some have described the solar system as
consisting of the Sun, Jupiter, and assorted
debris.
Some describe
Jupiter as the solar system's vacuum cleaner, due to its immense
gravity well. Unlike Saturn's intricate and complex ring patterns,
Jupiter has a simple ring system that is composed of an inner halo,
a main ring and a Gossamer ring. To the Voyager spacecraft, the
Gossamer ring appeared to be a single ring, but Galileo imagery
provided the unexpected discovery that Gossamer is really two
rings. One ring is embedded within the other. The rings are very
tenuous and are composed of dust particles kicked up as
interplanetary
meteoroids smash into Jupiter's four small inner moons Metis,
Adrastea, Thebe, and Amalthea.
Many of the
particles are microscopic in size. Nearly four centuries ago
Galileo Galilei turned his homemade telescope towards the heavens
and discovered three points of light, which at first he thought to
be stars, hugging the planet Jupiter. These stars were arranged in
a straight line with Jupiter. Sparking his interest, Galileo
observed the stars and found that they moved the wrong way. Four
days later another star appeared. After observing the stars over
the next few weeks, Galileo concluded that they were not stars but
planetary bodies in orbit around Jupiter. These four stars have
come to be known as the Galilean satellites.
"http://www.geocachingmaine.org">