Longitude: 149.457044 Latitude: -30.854065
Travelling along the Newell Highway, in New South Wales, heading southwards from Narrabri, and, situate on the eastern flank of the highway – selected rest stops form part of “The World’s Largest Virtual Solar System Drive – A scaled model 38 million times smaller than outer space!”.
This fascinating representation of our Solar System uses the ‘Siding Spring Observatory’ as ‘The Sun’, and expands outwards, depicting each planet’s distance from ‘The Sun’ – massively scaled down, of course.
The ‘Yamminba’ Rest Area represents the planet ‘Uranus’.
Uranus cannot be seen from Earth without a telescope. Being the seventh planet from the Sun, it was not known in ancient times – it was first discovered by William Herschel in 1781, during a survey of the sky using a telescope. Uranus is named after the ancient Greek supreme God of the Heavens, Ouranos. It is the smallest of the four ‘gas giants’ – Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune being the other three – its atmosphere is composed of 83% hydrogen, 15% Helium and 2% Methane.
Uranus’ diameter measures 47,150 km – compared to Earth’s diameter which is 12,760 km.
Uranus takes 84 years to orbit the Sun. Its axis is at 97.9 degrees, meaning that it is close to lying on its side as it orbits the Sun. This equates to the north and south poles of Uranus lying near to where the equator lies on Earth. Therefore, it ‘rolls’ around the Sun, like a barrel. During parts of its orbit, one or other of the poles directly faces the Sun – thus the planet gets around 42 years of direct sunlight, followed by 42 years of darkness. It is believed that an Earth-sized planet may have collided with Uranus, thus causing the drastic tilt.
Uranus rotates on its axis every 17 hours and 14 minutes, faster than that of Earth, which rotates every 24 hours – giving us the change from day to night. It rotates in the opposite direction to Earth.
Uranus is 2,869 million km from the Sun. Earth is located 149.6 million km from the Sun.
Uranus wind speeds can reach up to 900 km per hour.
Interestingly, the chemical element Uranium, discovered in 1789, was named after the then newly discovered planet of Uranus.
This medium-sized rest area is located some 52 km north of the beautiful township of Coonabarabran, is well shaded, and comes equipped with sheltered picnic tables, public toilets, and rubbish bins. Ample parking is available for vehicles – large or small . . .
Helpful Hints:
– Obtain Directions here
– Ample Parking for Large Rigs
– Large Area
– Nearby Features:
– Shopping
– Facilities available nearby
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- Public Toilets
- Mobile Data 3G - 4G
- Mobile Reception
- Pavilion
- Picnic Tables
- Rubbish Bins
- Information
- Off Street Parking
- Big Rig Access
- Sealed Road