Saturn rises in Aroostook’s scale model of solar system

WESTFIELD – With students who helped build it gathered around, a half-ton scale model of the planet Saturn was lowered Friday morning onto a 10-foot steel support pole in a field along the east side of Route 1.

“We’ve been four years getting to this point,” said Dr. Kevin McCartney, professor of science and geology at the University of Maine at Presque Isle and curator of the North Maine Museum of Science. As a crane slowly lowered the model onto its support, McCartney dashed about giving directions.

“We’ll do Neptune in a couple of weeks and Uranus after the winter,” he said.

The Saturn model is about 52 inches in diameter; with its rings, it has a diameter of 10 feet. It is the seventh model erected in a project which, when completed next spring, will stretch 40 miles from Presque Isle to Houlton.

At a scale of 1:93,000,000 miles, the entire model will be the largest of its kind in the world. It will include the sun, located at UMPI, nine planets and seven moons.

With the exception of the Pluto model, which is located in the Maine Tourist Information Center near Interstate 95 in Houlton, all of the planets will be visible from the road.

The Saturn model will be dedicated to Alvin F. Reeves II, a potato breeder in Westfield who served as curator of the Northern Maine Science Museum and worked on the model project until his death in May 2001. The entire model will be dedicated sometime next spring.

Though he has been the ringleader of sorts for the project, McCartney was quick to point out Friday that the undertaking has been the result of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers, businesses, community leaders, and students from a dozen schools.

On Friday, some of the students from the Caribou Technology Center and the Fort Fairfield Middle-High School who helped build or paint Saturn were on hand to watch its raising.

“I’m really proud,” said Derek Boudreau, a sophomore at Fort Fairfield, who helped paint the sphere and its rings. “I’m just wondering how long it will last.”

Kimberly James, a senior, said she was proud that she could do something that is a part of history.