Planet Path (Minden)

Sun in front of the Prussia Museum

The planet path of the city of Minden is a planet path with a scale of 1: 1 billion, which was created in 1996 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of the astronomer and mathematician Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel , who was born in Minden in 1784 . The planet path was built by students, teachers and parents from the Besselgymnasium in Minden. Numerous companies and individuals have sponsored individual planets.

At a scale of 1: 1 billion, the sun shrinks to a diameter of 1.39 m and the earth to a diameter of 1.3 cm. Nevertheless, the distance between the sun and the earth is 150 m and the distance between Pluto and the sun is even 6 km.

The planet path begins at the Prussian Museum, in front of which there is a model of the sun. The planets Mercury , Venus , Earth and Mars will be passed on Simeonsplatz . The giant planet Jupiter can be reached in the glacis and the other gas planets Saturn , Uranus and Neptune along the Weser cycle path . After 5.9 km the dwarf planet Pluto appears and with it the end of the path in Todtenhausen on the Weserradweg at the Hotel Grashoff.

For each of the eight planets and the dwarf planet Pluto, the mean distance from the sun, the period of revolution around the sun, the mass relative to the earth's mass, the diameter, the duration of the self-rotation as well as the mean surface temperature and the number of moons are given on round disks.