When TeamJiffy first created this series, this was the location
chosen as the center of the Solar System. Unfortunately, at the
time there was a cache already close to this location, so the
series proceeded without a cache here. That has now been
rectified.
Look up in the sky at night. 99% of what you see are nearby
stars. Sol is the closest star, and the center of everything about
the solar system. Its diameter is about 860,000 miles, and contains
more than 90% of the mass of the entire solar system. It is
basically a large ball of plasma, converting hydrogen to helium
through nuclear fusion, and in so doing emitting enough energy to
affect everything for several light years. The sun is an average
star, about half way through an expected lifespan of more than 10
billion years. This solar system model has placed Mercury one mile
from this location. All the other original planets have been placed
in orbit at distances from San Jose that match the scale set with
the planet Mercury. With this scale, planet Pluto is just a
bit over 100 miles away. The sun would have a scale diameter within
this model of 11 feet, 5.6 inches, or roughly the size of a
Volkswagen.
The container itself is a blinker, an absolutely necessary evil
here. Please exercise caution and stealth; the muggle traffic is
extremely high at this location. The cache is not in either the
street or gutter. You may also need to keep a tight rein on the
younger cachers here. Please bring a pen or pencil to record your
find on the log sheet.
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 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 enjoyable.
You can look at a map of the locations of all of the original
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.
Another round of thanks go out to CentralCArn, for replacing
this before I could get by.
