WALKING THE PLANETS
SCALE & SPEED.
Begin at the sun station — a locally-crafted representation of the sun — to learn about the evolution of our solar system and discover interesting facts about our star. Then, navigate the planet stations along the Pikes Peak Greenway Trail and the Santa Fe Trail to experience the scale of our solar system and unique features of each planet.
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The Colorado Springs Planet Walk is a scale model of our solar system. Starting in America the Beautiful Park, you can experience the relative size of the planets and their distance from the sun.
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The scale for the planets was chosen so that a leisurely walking pace mimics the speed of light. On this scale, each minute of walking is equivalent to traveling one light minute: approximately 11.2 million miles or 18 million km! It should take you about 8 minutes to walk from the Sun station to the Earth station. Of course, you can run or bike to travel between the planets at warp speed!
UNDERSTAND THE SIZE.
Watch the video to learn a little bit about the process of scaling the planets in a project similar to the Colorado Springs Planet Walk.