Oct 28, 2024
More Ithaca wandering
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More Ithaca wandering
INTO THE BLUE
© Anna Albold | 2019
187. Video - 131 points - You’re just a couple of young aliens in love, taking a casual stroll across the universe at the Anchorage, AL Planet walk. http://anchorageplanetwalk.org/wheretostart.html
Young aliens in love strolling across the universe at the Anchorage, Alaska Planet Walk. Thanks to Eliot Pearce, Robyn Hicks, Carrie Oswalt Gruhn and Elizabeth Manning!
Every man’s sky… Ok, the marketing team lied about “no man’s sky”, yet it still is a beautiful experience, a piece of art. Is crossing a complete virtual planet therefore an act of art, too? Some may think it’s a crazy waste of time, to me it’s a perfect idea to experience this virtual world.
Today I learned that the Sagan Planet Walk in my hometown of Ithaca, NY is adding another stop. On the moon.
Named after famed astronomer and science communicator (and proud Ithacan) Carl Sagan, the Sagan Planet Walk is a 5 billion:1 scale walkable model of the solar system starting with a pedestal representing the sun on the Commons in downtown Ithaca to Pluto (requiem in pace) at the Sciencenter several miles away. As a kid, this was cool and convenient for a while - it ran from outside my mom’s office to outside my front door. It’s gotten a lot bigger since then.
In 2012 a pedestal was added to represent Alpha Centauri - our nearest celestial neighbor - on the campus of the University of Hawai’i in Hilo, 8,000 miles from Ithaca. And now they’re adding a new stop on the moon.
I mean, not a pedestal representing the moon. There’s already one of those. I mean a plaque ON THE ACTUAL MOON. It will represent Kepler-37d, an exoplanet in the constellation Lyra approximately 210 lightyears away. And as luck would have it, if you scale that distance down by a factor of 5 billion, you get the distance from Ithaca to the moon.
“All good Ithacans know we are at the center of the Universe,” said Ithaca mayor Svante Myrick. “It’s nice to know we’re also the center of the galaxy’s largest science exhibit.”
The plaque will apparently be placed on the moon in the fall of 2015.
Sagan Planet Walk, Ithaca 2013
Sagan Planet walk adds new statue
Get a good stretch in and buy a wetsuit if you're planning on finishing the Carl Sagan Planet Walk now - they've added Alpha Centauri. In order to keep the walk to scale, the statue will be placed the appropriate distance away from the Sun in the middle of Ithaca...in Hawaii.
On Sept. 29, there will be a local celebration of the addition at 3 p.m. with Gregory Sloan, a senior research associate in Astronomy, providing a guided tour of the local part of the walk. The walk will have a Hawaiian theme to welcome our new universe-mates.