Megan's Blog

Is there something up with gravity?

Thanks to my pathetic excuse for an immune system I'm off with a chest infection again. At least being an astronomer, the lack of sleep for the last few days doesn't really bother me :-) Yesterday afternoon I was bored so I went for a bit of a wander round the arboretum. There is a scale model of the solar system in there with a display board for each planet stretching from Mercury on the edge of the car park out to Pluto in the far corner of the grounds. As I was walking towards the car park I discovered that Jupiter had moved! Instead of being where it usually is, it had migrated to the sundial which is near the location of Saturn, very strange. When I told the visitor centre staff that there must be something seriously wrong with gravity because Jupiter was moving away from the Sun, they thought I was being serious! Oooops!