The Star Of Bethlehem

Buying a telescope?

With Christmas just around the corner a lot of people have been asking me, ‘what type of telescope should I buy as a present this year’? My advice, as always, is unless you seriously plan to use your telescope then buy a pair of binoculars instead.

Telescopes come in basically two different types. A refractor telescope is the type that you look through, they have a lens at the front that collects the light and concentrates it to an eyepiece at the other end. The other type is a reflector telescope that uses a curved mirror to collect the light and then reflect it back up the tube to another mirror set at 90° that deflects the image into an eyepiece.

When it comes to telescopes, then I’m afraid gentlemen, that in this case bigger is better. And bigger in this case refers to the diameter of the lens or mirror of the telescope. When looking at buying a telescope disregard newspaper adverts that claim 400X magnification etc. Magnification doesn’t come into it, what a telescope does is make faint things appear brighter.

The Hubble Space Telescope

Only the Moon and planets look better under higher magnification, anything outside of the solar system won’t look any better. When you see pictures of galaxies or nebula’s in books or magazines with all their dramatic colours and star formations, these pictures have usually been massively computer enhanced from images taken with the $6 billion Hubble space telescope and will not look like anything that you can see!

A simple refractor telescope

When buying a telescope, anything less than 3 inches for a refractor or 6 inches for a reflector is really not worth the money. Spend £100 on a telescope then you are buying a ‘toy’ telescope but spending £100 on a pair of binoculars will buy you a top of the range set that will show you more of the night sky.

A Reflector telescope

If you decide to go for binoculars then there are two numbers that usually appear on them that you need to look for. 10 X 50 for example means that they magnify 10 times and have a lens diameter of 50mm. I have a little pocket sized pair that are 20 X 25, these are great for bird watching etc. but are useless for astronomy as the lens diameter is only 25mm and cannot collect enough light to make the stars appear brighter.

If you are still confused then the next meeting of the Fuengirola Astronomy Society is being held on Thursday 26th November at 8.00pm at the Angel Mijas restaurant which is on the Fuengirola to Mijas road just next to the Valparaiso restaurant and splash pools. It is free to attend and I have arranged for the manager of a telescope store to come along and give a talk about telescopes, their history, different types and how to choose and use one.

There is water on the Moon!

Last weekend NASA released the findings of its latest mission to the Moon. On October 9th the LCROSS rocket deliberately crashed into the crater Cabeus that is in perpetual darkness at the very south pole of the Moon.

The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a two-part plume of material from the bottom of the crater. The first part consisted of a plume of vapor and very fine dust and the second produced a lower angle curtain of heavier material. This material has not seen sunlight in billions of years. As it was exposed to the sunlight it vapourised and was detected by the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) itself that flew directly through the plume a few minutes later.

It has taken almost a month for NASA to analyze the results but now they have spoken out to say that ‘there is frozen water molecules trapped in the lunar dust in areas that are away from direct sunlight’.

The importance of this find are tremendous because if there is water on a seemingly lifeless body such as the Moon then the possibility of it being found on more hospitable planets is fantastic! The existence of water makes the hunt for extra terrestrial life take on a new lease of life.

Well done NASA!

International Year of Astronomy.

As 2009 is the International year of Astronomy I’ve been asked to a lot of star parties throughout the year giving talks to different groups about the stars and planets. Using a laptop and video projector I give a PowerPoint presentation explaining different aspects of the universe and Solar System. Then we go outside and using the telescopes and high powered laser beams I can point out the various constellations, stars and planets.

For the Christmas period I have developed a brand new PowerPoint presentation based on a TV show that I did a few years ago on what the Star of Bethlehem could have been. As I researched the program I discovered some really fascinating facts about it and I was shocked to discover that something extraordinary really did happen in the skies of Bethlehem around the time that Jesus was born.

If any societies, groups or schools are interested in me coming along to your event to demonstrate this or any of the other talks I have prepared then please contact me through my website. My Apollo 11 presentation is particularly dramatic as I bring along models of the Lunar Lander and even a life size Buzz Aldrin! A lot of today’s children are not even aware that we landed on the Moon 40 years ago.

What Time Is It?

Did you remember to put your clocks back by one hour on Sunday morning? Well, here in Spain if you put them back from 2.00 am to 1.00 am then you have set them to the ‘wrong’ time. On Sunday morning we changed from British Summer time to Greenwich Mean Time.

Greenwich was a small village just outside London and in 1675 a royal observatory was built by King Charles II and the vacancy for the first astronomer royal, John Flamsteed, was created to accurately measure the stars. As Britain was such an important naval territory it was vital for navigation purposes for the sailors to determine their longitude position.

In 1851 it was universally decided that Greenwich was to become the prime meridian that is to say that a line running from north to south of the Earth and passing through Greenwich should be longitude 0°00’00”. I visited Greenwich observatory once and kissed my wife across this line, I was standing in the east as Marilyn was standing in the west!

By 1884 two thirds of the world had adopted this line as the prime meridian. The Earth was then divided into 24 equal segments, every line to the east of Greenwich is one hour+1 ahead of Greenwich and every line to the west is one hour-1 behind Greenwich. 180° from Greenwich is the International Date Line, which is where today becomes tomorrow.

The time was determined as 12 noon when the Sun is due south of Greenwich but this turned out to be not true because the Earth orbits the Sun at slightly different speeds, faster when it is closer to the Sun and slower when it is at its furthest from the Sun. This discrepancy can add up to as much as 16 minutes before or after true solar time, so an average or mean time was set; Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Universal Time (UTC).

Spain however is to the west of the prime meridian, which means it should be at least 1 hour behind UK time. Spain's time is the result of Franco's Order established on 8 March 1940 abandoning Greenwich Mean Time in favour of GMT+1. This time change was most likely enacted to be in keeping time with allies Germany and Italy, but included was a provision for it to be phased out in the future which never happened.

Due to this, Spain is almost two hours ahead of its local solar mean time during the summer and one hour ahead in winter, which probably explains the notoriously late schedule for which we have all come to love! Hasta manýana.

Planetary Conjunction

Scroll page down for latest pictures.

The Sun, Moon and all the planets move across the sky in a very narrow band that we call the ecliptic, so occasionally two or more planets will appear to come together in the sky in what is known as a conjunction. And if you are up in the morning of Thursday 8th between 7.30 and 8.00 am you will see a beautiful conjunction of the planets Mercury, Venus and Saturn in the eastern sky just before sunrise.

The Eastern sky at 7.30 am 8th October

Venus is the dazzlingly bright ‘star’ that you can see each morning and just below it you will find Mercury to the right and Saturn to the left. Mercury and Saturn are so close together that you can hardly separate them. Of course they are not really this close; it is just a line of sight effect that makes them appear as though they are almost touching.

Because Venus and Mercury are closer in to the sun than we are then we can only see them when they are either to the far right or far left of the Sun. When they are to the right of the Sun they appear in the morning sky rising before the Sun, but when they are to the left of the Sun then they appear in the evening sky setting after the Sun has gone down. This gives rise to the common name for Venus as either the ‘morning star’ or the ‘evening star’.

When you see Mercury on Thursday morning it will be at its absolute farthest to the right of the Sun, from now on it will move rapidly back towards the Sun before disappearing behind the Sun to re-emerge in a few weeks time as an evening object.

Venus passed its farthest position from the Sun several weeks ago and is now also heading back toward the Sun and it too will be lost behind the Sun until next year when it will reappear in the evening sky.

If you can keep looking each morning for the next week you will clearly see Venus moving each day closer and closer toward the horizon until the following Thursday 15th when the Moon too will join the little party as a very slim crescent. On the morning of Tuesday 13th Venus and Saturn will be almost touching each other with Mercury very close to the horizon.

The Eastern sky at 7.30 am 13th October

As an added treat for you, if you follow the line from Mercury and Saturn up through Venus and keep going you will come across a very red coloured ‘star’ this is the planet Mars. For all the people who received the hoax email this year telling them that Mars would appear as big as the moon then I’m afraid it’s just not true as you can see.

Venus, Saturn and the Moon 16th October 7.50 am

Saturn, Venus, Mercury and the Moon 16th October 7.55am I didnt notice Mercury when I took the photograph!!

Fuengirola Astronomical Society

Because of the interest and enthusiasm shown by the members of the Fuengirola Astronomical society, it was only a matter of time before someone suggested some practical sessions. So when Lee Osborne suggested an all night observing marathon everyone jumped at the chance to attend.

Last Saturday night, 14 of us members all met at the Euro market car park in Fuengirola and set off in convoy to a perfect viewing location along the old Mijas road. By 8.00pm we had set up telescopes, laptop computers, cameras, tables & chairs and enough food and drink to feed a battalion and settled down for a nights observing.

We each had a list of 40 objects that would be visible during the night beginning with Jupiter and its four biggest moons, we then went on to find a collection of double stars, the Andromeda galaxy, nebulas, star clusters and a wide selection of objects from the Messier catalogue. Using Peter Hammond’s computer controlled telescope we easily found elusive Uranus and Neptune. Several shooting stars even graced the sky for us. And while Brian and Michelle made fresh tea and Elisha took the photo’s we all chipped in to help Phil and Danny to get to grips with their telescopes.

Unfortunately the clouds rolled in so at about 2 am we decided to call it a night but everyone agreed that it had been a great evening and pledged to do it again soon.

The astronomy society is still in its first year and we have agreed to become part of the U3A at Fuengirola. Enrolment into the U3A is taking place this week and next week. You can sign up for any of the very many courses on offer from the U3A including the astronomy course on 5th October at the Ark fellowship in Las Rampas from 3.00pm. See the U3A website for further details.

The astronomy society meets on the last Thursday of the month at the newly refurbished Angel Mijas restaurant which is next to the Valparaiso along the Fuengirola to Mijas road. If anyone would like to come along then we are meeting tomorrow night (Thursday 24th) at 8.00pm. I will be giving an illustrated talk about galaxies and weather permitting we should be able to see the Andromeda galaxy through the telescopes.

We even have a visit from the international Space Station at 21.23 coming from the North West and crossing the northern part of the sky. It will disappear into the Earth’s shadow just as it reaches the W constellation of Cassiopeia.

The meetings are free to attend but you can pay €5 for very excellent Tapas available from the restaurant.

2009 The International Year Of Astronomy

2009 has been designated by the International astronomical union and UNESCO as the year of astronomy. Over 135 countries are taking part to celebrate the 400 anniversary of Italian astronomer Galileo turning his telescope to the skies for the very first time in 1609.

Galileo discovered that the Moon has craters and mountains. That Saturn has rings and most controversially he discovered that Jupiter has Moons circling it. It was this discovery that led him to publish his findings in which he stated that if Jupiter has Moons travelling around it then surely the Earth must just be a simple planet circling the Sun and was not the center of the Universe. This claim went against all that was known at the time and angered the Catholic Church. He was placed under house arrest until he changed his opinion; he steadfastly stuck to his beliefs and so spent the rest of his life under arrest. It was not until 1992 that Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary.

The year of Astronomy is designed to open awareness of Astronomy especially to young people and events are being scheduled across the globe to bring the Universe to them. Special websites have been developed to advertise the events, many of them free. Some countries are donating quality telescopes to schools.

Click Here to go to the 2009 Website

Size matters

I got a really interesting email last week asking me to explain the size of our solar system, so I thought about putting it all in scale and I came up with some very interesting numbers.

Because of the huge distances involved it would be better to shrink the solar system down to a more manageable size. So let’s make the Sun a ball 3 meters in diameter and place it in Fuengirola center on the sea front, directly behind the statue that is there. If you have a free afternoon you may like to try this for yourself.

Now if you start to walk in the direction of Los Boliches go 125 meters to just outside the children’s playground area and here would be the first planet Mercury a ball 10mm across, about the size of a marble. This is almost 60 million km in real life. Carry on walking 233meters to outside of Bogart’s bar and here is Venus, 26mm or just over 1 inch in diameter.

Keep going until you reach the London Bar directly opposite the taxi rank at 322 meters from the Sun is Earth about 27mm in size. You would now be 150 million km or 93 million miles from the Sun.

It’s been easy up to here but now you need your best hiking boots. Next stop is Mars 490 meters from the Sun next to the Carousel. Mars would be only 14.5mm in size.

It’s a bit of a trek now until you come to the Yaramar Hotel 1677 meters from the Sun and here would be the Giant planet Jupiter 300mm (about 1 foot) in diameter.

The distance to each planet from the Sun very nearly doubles as you move further out, each being almost twice as far as the one before. So it wouldn’t surprise you to find that you have to walk 3075meters, just over 3km to Saturn at the Ocean View restaurant at the junction to Torreblanca. Although Saturn is slightly smaller than Jupiter, with the rings added it is almost 400mm about 17inches across.

Jump in the car and head out towards Benelmadena and when you get to the Elephant roundabout at the Holiday village complex you would find a croquet ball about 100mm in size, this is the planet Uranus. Head on out to Benelmadena harbour 9 ½ km or 6 miles from the Sun is the last of the true planets, Neptune, a ball just slightly smaller than Uranus.

If you want to keep going then you have to pass Torremolinos, and come to the end of the runway at Malaga airport and here there would be a tiny ball 5mm across and this is Pluto. On this scale, the nearest star to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, would be 87000 km or 54000 miles, that’s twice the distance around the Earth!

I think it would be nice if these markers became a permanent piece of street art mounted on plinths at the individual sites at their correct size and distance from the Sun. It would make a very pleasant walk right along the Paseo Maritimo.

	Buying a telescope? With Christmas just around the corner a lot of people have been asking me, ‘what type of telescope should I buy as a present this year’? My advice, as always, is unless you seriously plan to use your telescope then buy a pair of binoculars instead. Telescopes come in basically two different types. A refractor telescope is the type that you look through, they have a lens at the front that collects the light and concentrates it to an eyepiece at the other end. The other type is a reflector telescope that uses a curved mirror to collect the light and then reflect it back up the tube to another mirror set at 90° that deflects the image into an eyepiece. When it comes to telescopes, then I’m afraid gentlemen, that in this case bigger is better. And bigger in this case refers to the diameter of the lens or mirror of the telescope. When looking at buying a telescope disregard newspaper adverts that claim 400X magnification etc. Magnification doesn’t come into it, what a telescope does is make faint things appear brighter. The Hubble Space Telescope Only the Moon and planets look better under higher magnification, anything outside of the solar system won’t look any better. When you see pictures of galaxies or nebula’s in books or magazines with all their dramatic colours and star formations, these pictures have usually been massively computer enhanced from images taken with the $6 billion Hubble space telescope and will not look like anything that you can see! A simple refractor telescope When buying a telescope, anything less than 3 inches for a refractor or 6 inches for a reflector is really not worth the money. Spend £100 on a telescope then you are buying a ‘toy’ telescope but spending £100 on a pair of binoculars will buy you a top of the range set that will show you more of the night sky. A Reflector telescope If you decide to go for binoculars then there are two numbers that usually appear on them that you need to look for. 10 X 50 for example means that they magnify 10 times and have a lens diameter of 50mm. I have a little pocket sized pair that are 20 X 25, these are great for bird watching etc. but are useless for astronomy as the lens diameter is only 25mm and cannot collect enough light to make the stars appear brighter. If you are still confused then the next meeting of the Fuengirola Astronomy Society is being held on Thursday 26th November at 8.00pm at the Angel Mijas restaurant which is on the Fuengirola to Mijas road just next to the Valparaiso restaurant and splash pools. It is free to attend and I have arranged for the manager of a telescope store to come along and give a talk about telescopes, their history, different types and how to choose and use one. There is water on the Moon! Last weekend NASA released the findings of its latest mission to the Moon. On October 9th the LCROSS rocket deliberately crashed into the crater Cabeus that is in perpetual darkness at the very south pole of the Moon. The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a two-part plume of material from the bottom of the crater. The first part consisted of a plume of vapor and very fine dust and the second produced a lower angle curtain of heavier material. This material has not seen sunlight in billions of years. As it was exposed to the sunlight it vapourised and was detected by the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) itself that flew directly through the plume a few minutes later. It has taken almost a month for NASA to analyze the results but now they have spoken out to say that ‘there is frozen water molecules trapped in the lunar dust in areas that are away from direct sunlight’. The importance of this find are tremendous because if there is water on a seemingly lifeless body such as the Moon then the possibility of it being found on more hospitable planets is fantastic! The existence of water makes the hunt for extra terrestrial life take on a new lease of life. Well done NASA! International Year of Astronomy. As 2009 is the International year of Astronomy I’ve been asked to a lot of star parties throughout the year giving talks to different groups about the stars and planets. Using a laptop and video projector I give a PowerPoint presentation explaining different aspects of the universe and Solar System. Then we go outside and using the telescopes and high powered laser beams I can point out the various constellations, stars and planets. For the Christmas period I have developed a brand new PowerPoint presentation based on a TV show that I did a few years ago on what the Star of Bethlehem could have been. As I researched the program I discovered some really fascinating facts about it and I was shocked to discover that something extraordinary really did happen in the skies of Bethlehem around the time that Jesus was born. If any societies, groups or schools are interested in me coming along to your event to demonstrate this or any of the other talks I have prepared then please contact me through my website. My Apollo 11 presentation is particularly dramatic as I bring along models of the Lunar Lander and even a life size Buzz Aldrin! A lot of today’s children are not even aware that we landed on the Moon 40 years ago. What Time Is It? Did you remember to put your clocks back by one hour on Sunday morning? Well, here in Spain if you put them back from 2.00 am to 1.00 am then you have set them to the ‘wrong’ time. On Sunday morning we changed from British Summer time to Greenwich Mean Time. Greenwich was a small village just outside London and in 1675 a royal observatory was built by King Charles II and the vacancy for the first astronomer royal, John Flamsteed, was created to accurately measure the stars. As Britain was such an important naval territory it was vital for navigation purposes for the sailors to determine their longitude position. In 1851 it was universally decided that Greenwich was to become the prime meridian that is to say that a line running from north to south of the Earth and passing through Greenwich should be longitude 0°00’00”. I visited Greenwich observatory once and kissed my wife across this line, I was standing in the east as Marilyn was standing in the west! By 1884 two thirds of the world had adopted this line as the prime meridian. The Earth was then divided into 24 equal segments, every line to the east of Greenwich is one hour+1 ahead of Greenwich and every line to the west is one hour-1 behind Greenwich. 180° from Greenwich is the International Date Line, which is where today becomes tomorrow. The time was determined as 12 noon when the Sun is due south of Greenwich but this turned out to be not true because the Earth orbits the Sun at slightly different speeds, faster when it is closer to the Sun and slower when it is at its furthest from the Sun. This discrepancy can add up to as much as 16 minutes before or after true solar time, so an average or mean time was set; Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Universal Time (UTC). Spain however is to the west of the prime meridian, which means it should be at least 1 hour behind UK time. Spain's time is the result of Franco's Order established on 8 March 1940 abandoning Greenwich Mean Time in favour of GMT+1. This time change was most likely enacted to be in keeping time with allies Germany and Italy, but included was a provision for it to be phased out in the future which never happened. Due to this, Spain is almost two hours ahead of its local solar mean time during the summer and one hour ahead in winter, which probably explains the notoriously late schedule for which we have all come to love! Hasta manýana. Planetary Conjunction Scroll page down for latest pictures. The Sun, Moon and all the planets move across the sky in a very narrow band that we call the ecliptic, so occasionally two or more planets will appear to come together in the sky in what is known as a conjunction. And if you are up in the morning of Thursday 8th between 7.30 and 8.00 am you will see a beautiful conjunction of the planets Mercury, Venus and Saturn in the eastern sky just before sunrise. The Eastern sky at 7.30 am 8th October Venus is the dazzlingly bright ‘star’ that you can see each morning and just below it you will find Mercury to the right and Saturn to the left. Mercury and Saturn are so close together that you can hardly separate them. Of course they are not really this close; it is just a line of sight effect that makes them appear as though they are almost touching. Because Venus and Mercury are closer in to the sun than we are then we can only see them when they are either to the far right or far left of the Sun. When they are to the right of the Sun they appear in the morning sky rising before the Sun, but when they are to the left of the Sun then they appear in the evening sky setting after the Sun has gone down. This gives rise to the common name for Venus as either the ‘morning star’ or the ‘evening star’. When you see Mercury on Thursday morning it will be at its absolute farthest to the right of the Sun, from now on it will move rapidly back towards the Sun before disappearing behind the Sun to re-emerge in a few weeks time as an evening object. Venus passed its farthest position from the Sun several weeks ago and is now also heading back toward the Sun and it too will be lost behind the Sun until next year when it will reappear in the evening sky. If you can keep looking each morning for the next week you will clearly see Venus moving each day closer and closer toward the horizon until the following Thursday 15th when the Moon too will join the little party as a very slim crescent. On the morning of Tuesday 13th Venus and Saturn will be almost touching each other with Mercury very close to the horizon. The Eastern sky at 7.30 am 13th October As an added treat for you, if you follow the line from Mercury and Saturn up through Venus and keep going you will come across a very red coloured ‘star’ this is the planet Mars. For all the people who received the hoax email this year telling them that Mars would appear as big as the moon then I’m afraid it’s just not true as you can see. Venus, Saturn and the Moon 16th October 7.50 am Saturn, Venus, Mercury and the Moon 16th October 7.55am I didnt notice Mercury when I took the photograph!! Fuengirola Astronomical Society Because of the interest and enthusiasm shown by the members of the Fuengirola Astronomical society, it was only a matter of time before someone suggested some practical sessions. So when Lee Osborne suggested an all night observing marathon everyone jumped at the chance to attend. Last Saturday night, 14 of us members all met at the Euro market car park in Fuengirola and set off in convoy to a perfect viewing location along the old Mijas road. By 8.00pm we had set up telescopes, laptop computers, cameras, tables & chairs and enough food and drink to feed a battalion and settled down for a nights observing. We each had a list of 40 objects that would be visible during the night beginning with Jupiter and its four biggest moons, we then went on to find a collection of double stars, the Andromeda galaxy, nebulas, star clusters and a wide selection of objects from the Messier catalogue. Using Peter Hammond’s computer controlled telescope we easily found elusive Uranus and Neptune. Several shooting stars even graced the sky for us. And while Brian and Michelle made fresh tea and Elisha took the photo’s we all chipped in to help Phil and Danny to get to grips with their telescopes. Unfortunately the clouds rolled in so at about 2 am we decided to call it a night but everyone agreed that it had been a great evening and pledged to do it again soon. The astronomy society is still in its first year and we have agreed to become part of the U3A at Fuengirola. Enrolment into the U3A is taking place this week and next week. You can sign up for any of the very many courses on offer from the U3A including the astronomy course on 5th October at the Ark fellowship in Las Rampas from 3.00pm. See the U3A website for further details. The astronomy society meets on the last Thursday of the month at the newly refurbished Angel Mijas restaurant which is next to the Valparaiso along the Fuengirola to Mijas road. If anyone would like to come along then we are meeting tomorrow night (Thursday 24th) at 8.00pm. I will be giving an illustrated talk about galaxies and weather permitting we should be able to see the Andromeda galaxy through the telescopes. We even have a visit from the international Space Station at 21.23 coming from the North West and crossing the northern part of the sky. It will disappear into the Earth’s shadow just as it reaches the W constellation of Cassiopeia. The meetings are free to attend but you can pay €5 for very excellent Tapas available from the restaurant. 2009 The International Year Of Astronomy 2009 has been designated by the International astronomical union and UNESCO as the year of astronomy. Over 135 countries are taking part to celebrate the 400 anniversary of Italian astronomer Galileo turning his telescope to the skies for the very first time in 1609. Galileo discovered that the Moon has craters and mountains. That Saturn has rings and most controversially he discovered that Jupiter has Moons circling it. It was this discovery that led him to publish his findings in which he stated that if Jupiter has Moons travelling around it then surely the Earth must just be a simple planet circling the Sun and was not the center of the Universe. This claim went against all that was known at the time and angered the Catholic Church. He was placed under house arrest until he changed his opinion; he steadfastly stuck to his beliefs and so spent the rest of his life under arrest. It was not until 1992 that Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary. The year of Astronomy is designed to open awareness of Astronomy especially to young people and events are being scheduled across the globe to bring the Universe to them. Special websites have been developed to advertise the events, many of them free. Some countries are donating quality telescopes to schools. Click Here to go to the 2009 Website Size matters I got a really interesting email last week asking me to explain the size of our solar system, so I thought about putting it all in scale and I came up with some very interesting numbers. Because of the huge distances involved it would be better to shrink the solar system down to a more manageable size. So let’s make the Sun a ball 3 meters in diameter and place it in Fuengirola center on the sea front, directly behind the statue that is there. If you have a free afternoon you may like to try this for yourself. Now if you start to walk in the direction of Los Boliches go 125 meters to just outside the children’s playground area and here would be the first planet Mercury a ball 10mm across, about the size of a marble. This is almost 60 million km in real life. Carry on walking 233meters to outside of Bogart’s bar and here is Venus, 26mm or just over 1 inch in diameter. Keep going until you reach the London Bar directly opposite the taxi rank at 322 meters from the Sun is Earth about 27mm in size. You would now be 150 million km or 93 million miles from the Sun. It’s been easy up to here but now you need your best hiking boots. Next stop is Mars 490 meters from the Sun next to the Carousel. Mars would be only 14.5mm in size. It’s a bit of a trek now until you come to the Yaramar Hotel 1677 meters from the Sun and here would be the Giant planet Jupiter 300mm (about 1 foot) in diameter. The distance to each planet from the Sun very nearly doubles as you move further out, each being almost twice as far as the one before. So it wouldn’t surprise you to find that you have to walk 3075meters, just over 3km to Saturn at the Ocean View restaurant at the junction to Torreblanca. Although Saturn is slightly smaller than Jupiter, with the rings added it is almost 400mm about 17inches across. Jump in the car and head out towards Benelmadena and when you get to the Elephant roundabout at the Holiday village complex you would find a croquet ball about 100mm in size, this is the planet Uranus. Head on out to Benelmadena harbour 9 ½ km or 6 miles from the Sun is the last of the true planets, Neptune, a ball just slightly smaller than Uranus. If you want to keep going then you have to pass Torremolinos, and come to the end of the runway at Malaga airport and here there would be a tiny ball 5mm across and this is Pluto. On this scale, the nearest star to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, would be 87000 km or 54000 miles, that’s twice the distance around the Earth! I think it would be nice if these markers became a permanent piece of street art mounted on plinths at the individual sites at their correct size and distance from the Sun. It would make a very pleasant walk right along the Paseo Maritimo.