Bad Laasphe · DE

Planetenlehrpfad Bad Laasphe Sonne

The Planetenlehrpfad in Bad Laasphe is a walking trail that turns the entire solar system into something you can cover on foot. Laid out across roughly 6 km through the Lahn and Banfe valleys, it is a working scale model of the Sun and its planets built to a ratio of 1 to 1 billion, so the planets and the empty distances between them finally make intuitive sense. The walk begins at the model of the Sun — an unmistakable yellow concrete sphere, 1.40 m across, set in the Lahn riverside meadows near the Amalienhütte in Niederlaasphe — and ends some 5.97 km away at the dwarf planet Pluto near Laaspherhütte. Mercury sits a mere 58 m from the Sun, Earth 150 m, Jupiter 778 m, and Saturn a strung-out 1.43 km on, with each planet rendered at its true relative size. Conceived in 1998 by pupils and teachers of the Städtisches Gymnasium Bad Laasphe to mark the school's 75th anniversary, and backed by local businesses and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the trail is gentle, paved and open to all — families, strollers and wheelchairs alike. It is as much an educational experience as a stroll, and at a normal walking pace you cross the solar system three to four times faster than light itself.