THE GIGANTIC ORRERY.
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proper proportional distance from the sun if placed at one mile from St. Paul’sdome ; its orbit would pass through all places at that distance, say Somerset-house, the Tower of London , and the Borough of Southwark .
Venus would be a ball of thirteen inches diameter, placed at the distance ofone mile and a half from St. Paul’s, for instance, at Westminster Abbey .
The earth would be properly represented by one of our usual twelve-inchterrestrial globes, placed at the distance of two miles and a half from St. Paul’s,as at the Queen’s palace at Pimlico. The moon, a ball of nearly three inchesdiameter, revolving about it at a distance of thirty feet.
Mars would be a ball of nearly six and a half inches diameter, placed at thedistance of three miles and a half; say on Highgate-hill, or at Kensington- palace .
The asteroids, Vesta, Juno, Ceres, and Pallas, do not differ greatly fromeach other, either in size or distance; they would be properly represented byballs of somewhat more than a quarter of an inch diameter, at a little more thansix miles from St. Paul’s ; as at Blackheath, Dulwich , or Tottenham.
Jupiter would be a globe of nearly eleven feet in diameter, and placed attwelve miles from St. Paul’s ; as at Kingston, in Surrey, or Romford, in Essex.
Saturn would be a globe of nine feet six inches diameter, surrounded by aring of twenty-two feet diameter, and placed at the distance of twenty-one milesand a half; as at Windsor, in Berkshire, or at Gravesend , in Kent .
The planet Uranus , would be a globe of four feet six inches diameter, placedat the distance of forty-three miles from St. Paul’s, as within a few miles of thesea, in the neighbourhood of Brighton.
It may assist the imagination in forming a notion of the actual distances ofthe planets from the sun, to determine the time required to carry a cannon-ball,at its usual rate of flight, from the several planets to that luminary. Assumingthe rate of motion of a cannon-ball to be, in round numbers, 1000 miles anhour, or about seventeen miles per minute ; to traverse the distance betweenthe sun and Mercury would require its uniform flight during about four yearsand a quarter. From the sun to Venus , eight years; from the sun to the earth,nearly eleven years ; to Mars , about sixteen years and a half; to Vesta, Juno,Ceres , and Pallas, twenty-eight years ; to Jupiter , fifty-nine years and a half;to Saturn , 102 years ; and to Uranus , 205| years.
Scene No. XXII.— The Sun as seen from the different Planets.
In this scene we have a representation of the proportional diameter, orappearance, of the sun’s disc, as seen from the different planets. Suppose thelarger figure to represent the sun as seen from the planet Mercury ; the second,or next smaller figure, would shew the proportional appearance of the sun fromVenus ; the figure next above this, the proportional size of the sun as seenfrom the earth ; the next above this, is the proportional size as seen from