Space Art Installation Planned For North Court Street
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James McCormick (standing) and Jamie Scott pitched an idea for a solar system art installation along North Court Street. Scott displays a sign to show the size of the signs that will be used for the project.
WATER VALLEY – The Water Valley Board of Alderpersons provided preliminary approval for an art installation representing our solar system. The proposed artwork will feature the eight planets on metal signs located along North Court Street. The colorful, lively solar system installation will start with the sun in City Park and run east on North Court Street, with pictures of each planet scaled to model their relative distance from the Sun.
Water Valley residents James McCormick and Jamie Scott pitched the idea during the July 5 city board meeting, explaining that they will cover the cost of the installation and install the signs between the sidewalk and street in a manner that is not intrusive and does not obstruct visibility for motorists.
“The beauty is to be able to look up the hill and see the signs spaced out,” McCormick said about the visibility of installation from the northeast corner of City Park. The men pitched the idea as an entertaining learning tool for students.
Scott explained that the first sign, featuring our Sun, will be installed in City Park and offer a QR code that can be scanned with a smart phone to provide information about the art installation. The inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, will all be located fairly close to the Sun sign. In accordance with the scale of the actual solar system, viewers will have to go a bit to get a proper sense of how far each outer planet is from the sun. For example, Earth is 147 million miles from the Sun, while Uranus is 2.75 billion miles away. As such, the most distant planet, Neptune (4.45 billion miles), will be located way up on top of the hill next to Davidson Elementary.
Scott explained that Pluto didn’t make the cut for the proposed solar system display. Not only is Pluto considered a dwarf planet, but it also is separated from the Sun by 58 astronomical units (a simplified number used to express a planet’s distance from the sun), much farther than Neptune’s 30 astronomical units.
