Wordless Wednesday - Uranus

...Two weeks ago on our road trip home from Queensland we traveled an inland route that took us to Dubbo via Coonabarabran and past the above Solar System scale models. I googled it.

Strap on your seatbelts and launch into Coonabarabran, The Astronomy Capital of Australia. Experience a scaled model of our Solar System that's 38 million times smaller than outer space!

See three-dimensional planet models along the way as you shuttle from Pluto at the furthest reaches of the Solar System to the Sun, which is represented by the 37-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope dome at Siding Spring Observatory.
The planets are displayed on huge billboards with the size of the planets and the distance between each billboard scaled relative to the dome – the Sun - along the five main roads that lead to Coonabarabran in regional NSW. You can also learn interesting facts about the Solar System and the unique features of each planet –

Fact ...If you’re travelling in your car at 100km/hr along the Solar System Drive, you’d be “virtually” hurtling through space at a million kilometres per second - more than three times faster than the speed of light!

I'd never heard about the Solar System drive before. We only got to see two of them.

It was sheer coincidence we stopped for a pee stop at Uranus to use the 'facilities'.
However, the composting (? organic) toilets were so dirty and smelt disgusting.
I've never smelt anything so bad. I almost lost my lunch and the snacks I'd been munching since 7.30am.
I could barely breathe in there , let alone bring myself to go potty. So when nature called I answered ...further down the rest area along ... a dirt track surrounded by scrub . In fact my husband could have said I saw ....Uranus =) if he had been looking in my direction.

Seriously, I am very interested in seeing the whole Solar system ...that's another thing to add to my list.
♥

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