Two topical walks on astronomy have been built in the direct neighbourhood of the Effelsberg 100m radio telescope. They describe astronomical targets from our solar system (planetary walk) and from the Milky Way in different scales, thus giving an idea of the huge distances to deal with in astronomy. A third walk, the "Galaxy Walk", will be opened in summer/autumn 2010.

Planetary Walk at the Effelsberg telescope: description of Earth.

Planetary Walk (Description in German). Walking path of 780 m total length, leading from the car park of Effelsberg observatory to the visitor's pavilion. The walk, scaled 1 : 7.7 x 109, starts with the dwarf planet Pluto at the car park and leads to the inner planets and the sun in direct neighbourhood of the visitor's pavilion.

Milky Way Walk (Description in German). Walking path of 4 km total length, leading from Burgsahr in the Sahrbach valley south of the Effelsberg telescope to the visitor's pavilion of the telescope. The scale of the walk is 1 : 1017, with 4 km corresponding to 40,000 light years. The described objects of the Milky way lead from the star forming region IC410 in the outer area of the Galaxy via sun and nearby objects to the Galactic center.

Galaxy Walk (Description in German). Walking path of 2.6 km total length, leading from a viewing point behind the Effelsberg radio telescope to "Martinshütte", a small hut in the direction to Kirchsahr. The scale of the walk is 1 : 5 x 1022, with 2.6 km corresponding to almost 13 billion light years. The described objects cover nearby galaxies like Andromeda (M31) and M82 as well as distant quasars like 3C48, 3C286 or 3C295. The "Galaxy Walk" is presently under construction.

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Last modified by njn on Thursday, May 6th, 2010.
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