Trip Report

Six of us went out on the Second Solar System walk through from Day Island Road at the Duck Pond, where the Sun is located, to Neptune, nearly 3 miles distant. It was a cold morning and there were a lot of downed branches off the trail, but the planets survived well. I went through special times observing the planets and some of my special occasions with each: seeing Mercury from downtown Chicago one time, so this "elusive planet" isn't all that difficult to see. For Venus, it was the transit. For Mars, it was Neil deGrasse Tyson's comment that the science behind the movie "The Martian" was quite good. For Jupiter, it was the fast rotation and the squashed appearance. For Saturn, it was the time I watched it cover a star and saw the star go through the rings, revealing subtle differences in thicknesses that can't be seen any other time. For Uranus, it was the Voyager 2 spacecraft pictures and the idea that not only is the universe stranger than we imagined, it is stranger than we can imagine. For Neptune, it was the Great Dark Spot, another blue planet, and the night in 1989 I observed it with the TV on to "Neptune all Night," as the Voyager 2 spacecraft sent back pictures. The guide star for the Voyager spacecraft was the star Canopus, which took me a while to think up. One of the downsides about moving here is that I have less of a connection to the night sky, because it isn't as clear, there is more light pollution, and I can't just walk outside and see everything. It's a fair trade and then some, but I need to regain my observational skills. It was a nice trip, and Janet was happy to learn about the difference between morning and evening stars, and the fact that they aren't stars at all, but a planet that is above the horizon when the Sun rises or sets respectively.