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.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly emailAnd if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Astron­o­my Cours­es

Mag­ni­fy­ing the Uni­verse: Move From Atoms to Galax­ies in HD

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Uni­verse From Noth­ing’


by | Permalink | Comments (4) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (4)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Leave a Reply

Quantcast