
Photos of the Otford Solar System Model - jsingleton
https://unop.uk/travel/photos-of-the-otford-solar-system-model/
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Patient0
I walked past "Neptune" just last Sunday doing this wonderful walk:
[http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/book_1/walk_23/index.shtml](http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/book_1/walk_23/index.shtml)

It's beautiful countryside there - I highly recommend it. There's also a
circular walk in that area which can be more convenient if you're driving:
[http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/book_1/walk_43/](http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/book_1/walk_43/)

Both walks take you past parts of the Otford solar system.

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cormullion
This looks fun. Last week I cycled from Pluto to the Sun on the Somerset Space
Walk. The scale is something like a million kilometres per pedal revolution.
And it took seemingly ages to get from Pluto to Neptune...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Space_Walk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Space_Walk)

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Brakenshire
I'm actually the person who added these planets to OpenStreetMap, so it's
somewhat funny and incongruous to see them appearing on Hacker News.

Incidentally, your walk of about 3 miles sends you within a couple of hundred
meters of the partial ruins/remains of a medieval palace (16th century), a
Norman church (11th-14th century), the site of the Anglo-Saxon Battle of
Otford (776), and the archaeological sites of two Roman villas (1st-3rd
century). If you widen out by another 500m, there's another Roman villa, and
an iron age fort up on the hills.

It's very unusual in Roman Britain to have three villas so close together, and
there is speculation that one of the sites may be a temple complex. Lead
weights were found which could be unrolled to reveal curses - 'I HATE
CLAUDIUS, MAY HE BREAK HIS LEG' sort of thing. They were apparently thrown in
for the attention of the local river goddess.

The third villa site has just been discovered, and excavations by the local
society are actually underway this weekend.

There are a number of other villas dotted northwards along the valley, and one
open to the public with a series of famous mosaics, and the earliest evidence
of Christianity in Roman Britain, at Lullingstone.

Otford during the Roman period would have been a significant centre of power,
it is at the southern point of the river Darenth, which flows north into the
Thames, through very productive agricultural land. To the south is the Weald,
which would then have been a massive forest stretching almost down to the
south coast and the English Channel. More than one Roman army entered that
forest and never emerged. So for the Romans Otford and the Darenth Valley
would have been both a breadbasket and the edge of civilization.

It would also have then important as a crossing point for the river, and the
point where the river cuts through the North Downs, a set of chalk hills which
run Eastwards and then South East, to Dover. Those are the same hills that are
cut by the Channel to make up the White Cliffs.

Now, it's a rural or intermittently suburban area, strong banker/commuter
territory for the City of London (it's mostly countryside and small villages,
but Canary Wharf is only 20 miles away, so house prices are off the scale).

Anyway, my vague point is (beyond being mildly interesting), if you're in
London on holiday, or in fact if you live in London, I recommend hiring a car
and wandering off into the Green Belt and going to somewhere like this
(although it could be pretty much any direction, go 15-20 miles outside the
M25 orbital motorway from London and you'll hit the countryside). You'll get a
much better idea of England (which is surely above all about cricket on the
green, pubs, cream tea and village churches!) than by getting entirely sucked
into the tourist maw in London.

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jsingleton
Thanks. Good work!

They weren't on OSM the first time I came across it on an OS map. So I guess
it's a fairly recent addition. It was exciting to discover what the "monument"
was.

The North Downs Way (Pilgrims Way) and Darent Valley Path both run through
Otford. [https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/shop/maps/explorer-map-
seve...](https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/shop/maps/explorer-map-sevenoaks-
tonbridge.html)

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filmor
There is something like this in Bonn, Germany, along the Rhine, starting close
to the Post Tower. It's called Planetenlehrpfad but I currently can't find an
English resource on it.

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pavel_lishin
This is great; I wonder if it would be possible to set a model up in New York.
Maybe just inside Manhattan? Would be a fun geocaching exercise.

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dquarks
Really great representation of the enormity of the our solar system (and the
universe)

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jeffwass
Yeah, no doubt.

I was blown away after seeing a scale model solar system on the U Colorado
Boulder campus.

The tiny size of the planets relative to the distance of the orbits is mind-
blowing, especially the outer planets. It's almost amazing we're able to see
the planets so well with the naked eye from Earth through just their own
passive reflection of sunlight.

