Guest blogger: Kevin McCartney

Aroostook County hosts one of Maine’s coolest tourist attractions: the Maine Solar System Model! While solar system models are not particularly unusual, Maine’s is the largest in the Western Hemisphere (there is only one larger, located in Sweden). The model extends for nearly 100 miles along Route 1, on the eastern border of Maine, from Topsfield (lucky home to dwarf planet Eris) to the Sun at the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI). The model was built as a community project by a consortium of twelve schools and many businesses and individuals scattered throughout northern Maine, with all materials and labor donated.

The sizes of all objects, as well as the distances between them, are at a scale of one mile equal to an astronomical unit, or AU. One AU is measured by the distance from earth to the sun, or 93,000,000 miles. The original construction was completed in 2003 with nine planets and 7 moons. This was expanded in 2008 to include three dwarf planets. The reclassification of Pluto from Planet to Dwarf caused some head-scratching, so there are now TWO Pluto’s, a “planet Pluto” at the average distance from the sun (40 AU, at the tourist information center in Houlton) and “dwarf planet Pluto” at the current location 33 AU from the Sun, located to the entrance of the Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum in Littleton. There are plans to add two more dwarf planets at locations further north.

For those who enter Route 1 from I-95 (milepost 301), a tour of the solar system begins at the Houlton Information Center just north of the Interstate exit on Route 1, which hosts Planet Pluto. Brochures are available there and at the Central Aroostook Chamber of Commerce in Presque Isle, which hosts Venus. All objects except Planet Pluto and the Sun are visible from the road and parking areas are available at Jupiter and Saturn, both of which include moons. The Sun is located in Folsom Hall on the UMPI campus, which includes other science displays.

The Maine Solar System Model has been a great inspiration for learning and science education in Northern Maine. A “Pluto at the Speed of Light” super-marathon celebrated the arrival of the New Horizons spacecraft at Pluto and figuratively carried the first close-up pictures back to Earth in 2015. There is a letter box at Saturn. (http://www.letterboxing.org/america.htm). Many bike rides take place “along the universe,” and the model has been featured in various national magazines, including Smithsonian and Air and Space.

View the Maine Solar System Model website for more information.

Author: Kevin McCartney, Professor of Geology; Director of the Northern Maine Museum of Science, UMPI