The Solar System Drawn Amazingly to Scale Across 7 Miles of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert


Wylie Over­street and Alex Gorosh set out to cre­ate some­thing you’ve nev­er seen before — our solar sys­tem drawn to actu­al scale. For­get what you’ve seen in books, or on web sites. To depict things accu­rate­ly, you need a big­ger sur­face. A real­ly large can­vas. Like a sev­en-mile expanse in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert (which oth­er­wise hosts The Burn­ing Man Fes­ti­val). It’s on this dry lakebed that Over­street and Gorosh built “the first scale mod­el of the solar sys­tem with com­plete plan­e­tary orbits” and it’s a sight to behold. Cre­ative, indus­tri­ous, and hum­bling. Enjoy.

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