R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press Dan Young of the Delta Astronomical Society holds a recently-produced sample sign for the planet walk next to the weathered, black-and-white one it is to replace.

ESCANABA — Escanaba’s Planet Walk, a scale model of the solar system that spans 19 blocks of Ludington Street, is soon to be revamped. The signs mounted on wooden posts and a gleaming one-foot sphere representing the sun were dedicated in 2002, and the Delta Astronomical Society (DAS) — the group responsible for their original installation — has been working hard to modernize and redesign the placards. Samples have been produced and a good amount of the necessary funds raised.

The DAS came up with the notion of a planet walk in the 1990s, hoping to provide people with a frame of reference for the size of our world in relation to the others that orbit the same star. According Dan Young of the DAS, when the society presented the idea to the Escanaba City Council, they intended to place it in Ludington Park, but the council suggested the city’s main street instead, preferring the thought of the planet walk being coupled with local businesses as a multi-purpose attraction.

It has worked well — the straight shot down the north side of Ludington makes for a fairly easy 1.3-mile walk, and they’re mostly kept out of damage from the actual, 865,000-mile diameter sun.

When the idea of a planet walk for Escanaba was first discussed, said Young, it was the first of its kind — no other community had a model that was to scale in both distance and size and went all the way to Pluto. In the quarter-century since, that has changed. Moving forward, said Young, the DAS will hold the copyright to “the basic concept of shrinking the sun to a one-foot diameter sphere, which sets the scale” and the content of the new placards.

Not only are the signs on Ludington Street showing physical signs of age — mold or some other questionable substance has crept under the covers of some, posts have been hit by vehicles and the Mercury station is just a hole in the sidewalk — scientific knowledge surrounding astronomy has grown, as has the technology available to create an updated set. And — though it might seem unrelated at first — so has pop culture.

In the ’90s, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” — the 1989 comedy sci-fi flick starring Rick Moranis — was so popular that it not only was continuing to spur multiple sequels, but it had an effect on the DAS, too.

“The first line in the original proposal for this was, ‘we shrunk the sun,'” Young chuckled. “You know — ‘honey, we shrunk the sun.'”

That’s evidenced on the very first placard in front of City Hall near the corner of Ludington and 4th — “We Shrank the Solar System” is written in bold mid-way through the introductory paragraph.

Now that advances and reclassifications in regards to astronomy have taken place, another popular on-screen Rick comes to mind. In an episode of the animated show “Rick and Morty,” one character, upon learning that Pluto is no longer considered a planet, begins fighting NASA, insisting that Pluto be given its planetary status back, and becomes a hero on the icy world.

The Pluto sign from 2002 on Ludington’s 15th block actually does acknowledge the contentious classification but is still outdated. In the image available then, Pluto looked like nothing more than a ball-bearing. In modern photographs — including the one on the new DAS placard — surface details are visible. The description on the completely-redesigned placard also explains the binary nature of Pluto and Charon and identifies four other moons that were discovered in 2005, 2011 and 2012.

In seeking the most durable material back in 2002 for the 13 signs — introduction, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Voyager — the DAS ended up getting them made by Hoegh in Gladstone. At the time, monochrome was the only option for the aluminum panels. Other limitations meant that the hand-drawn planets weren’t exactly to scale.

The new signs, produced through Genesis Graphics, feature a digitally-scaled diagram depicting each celestial body at the size it would be when adhering to the scale set by the one-foot-diameter Sun over by City Hall: every 12 inches represent 865,000 miles.

The new designs also feature QR codes that direct viewers to National Geographic YouTube videos, a different one for each stop. Brochures have been designed to complement the walk.

When it comes to science, one constant is progress. Humankind is learning new things all the time.

“After we finished printing these (sample placards), about a week after, new information came out that they recalibrated the colors,” said Young, referring to images taken of Uranus and Neptune. For more than 30 years, it has been understood that Neptune was a much deeper, darker blue than Uranus, and this is how it was depicted even on the new DAS sign; only very recently did scientists announce that the two ice giants are roughly the same color.

The older, popularized images of Uranus and Neptune were taken by Voyager II, which also gets a nod on the DAS Planet Walk.

In front of Anderson Funeral Homes is the final station of the walk. Labeled “Voyager,” it represents the position of the Voyager I probe twenty years after its 1977 launch. Voyager I remains the farthest-flung man-made object from Earth, continuing onward on its trek in interstellar space. Its position in 2024, held to the scale established, would be a few miles outside of town — but for the sake of keeping the walk in Ludington, its station will remain at the 20-year mark.

The DAS successfully obtained a grant from the Community Foundation in 2019, a Rotary grant in 2020, and donations and pledges from other parties in the community. Said funds have allowed for some of the costs required for the setup, printing and installation of the new placards and frames. At the time of Young’s meeting with the Press last week, the DAS had about $2000 left to raise and was still seeking sponsors.

Other incidental fees, like repairing broken posts and ongoing maintenance, are not included in the estimate.

The DAS will appear before the Escanaba City Council during their next regular meeting on Thursday, March 21, to discuss the project.