One of the fundamental learning goals of introductory astronomy is for the students to gain some perspective on the scale and structure of the solar system. Many astronomy teachers have laid out the planets along a long strip of paper~1 or across a school grounds or campus.~2 Other activities that investigate the motion of the planets are often computer based,~(3,4) hiding the awe-inspiring distances between the planets. Our human orrery activity, adapted from the design at the Armagh Observatory in Ireland,~(5,7) combines the best of both approaches by creating a working model of the solar system that mimics both the scale and the motion of the planets.
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