We’ve all been there: You head down the canyon from Nederland for Boulder and you come up behind a tourist whose edibles-down-the-hatch delayed reaction has suddenly kicked in after they over-did it in some local venue.

Putzing behind them, you imagine, “Hey, if only I were flying through space from Nederland to Neptune, at several times the speed of light.”

You think, is that all-American dream is out of reach? Not anymore. I’m going to tell you how to make it come true, at twelve times the speed of light.

For starters, we scale the canyon’s Nederland-Boulder distance to the sun-Neptune distance. This works out to the earth-sun distance, called an astronomical unit (AU), being half a mile. Every time you go half a mile, you cover the distance from the earth to the sun = 1 AU.

On this scale, planetary distances work out as shown in the accompanying table, with the sun being at the Nederland traffic circle.

The best part is how fast you get to each planet as you go down the canyon. In the actual solar system, it takes light eight minutes to go 1 AU. (Meaning that we always see the sun eight minutes behind where it really is!)

At that pace, scaled to Boulder Canyon, the speed of light is just under four miles per hour, the rate of a plodding jogger.

I mean, maybe you think that at over 186,000 miles every second the speed of light is really fast. But that’s just peanuts compared to planetary distances. The sun’s light takes four hours to get from the sun to Neptune! Never mind that it takes four years for our sun’s light to get to its nearest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri.

The round-trip time for radio signals to go from the earth to Mars and back is typically 30 minutes, depending on Mars’s position. So, no back-and-forth conversations between the earth and Mars-nauts, whenever anyone might go there. In fact, if you were to radio-call, “How’re things?” you can then go down the hall; fix a cup of coffee; flip through the sports section; and plunk yourself down again at the comm console before you’ll hear them reply, “Nederland, we’ve got a problem.”

If you go down to Boulder in our scaled solar system at the posted speed limit of 45 miles per hour, you’ll be moving at the equivalent of twelve times the speed of light. A good clip by any measure.

Here’s how you tour the solar system (with, say, your kids; or maybe with someone else’s kids, to give them an educational experience = get rid of them for a while).

Enter the traffic circle. Orbit it (the sun), while you call out to the kids: “Propulsion! Guidance! Comms!” and they echo back, after each one, “Go!”

Then, launch out of the circle and head for Boulder. Have the kids follow your progress as you come up on, and pass, each planet’s location. Something you’ll notice as you go along is that, once you’re beyond Jupiter, it’s a Pretty Big Empty out there in the outer solar system. Good luck and Happy Motoring to Neptune.

In February Skies:

The sun begins the month in Capricornus, entering Aquarius on February 16. At mid-month, Nederland days and nights are 10.5 and 13.5 hours long, respectively.

The moon’s dates are: Last Quarter February 2; New February 9; First Quarter February 16; Full (Snow Moon) February 24.

February Meteors: None of note.

Best Sky Viewing Nights (Minimal Moon): February 3-15.

Sunset (Mid-Month): Capella is bright-white in the northeast. The Andromeda Galaxy is just west of overhead, with Cassiopeia (a squashed “W”) a bit northward. The Great Square of Pegasus is high in the west above Deneb.

Midnight (Mid-Month): Follow the arcing curve of the Big Dipper’s handle to red Arcturus (“Arc to Arcturus”) and then continue onward to bright-white Spica in the southeast. Leo, with burnt-orangish Regulus, is nearly overhead. The Lion’s front looks like a backward-facing question mark. Procyon is bright in the southwest, with Orion and Sirius setting below it. Cassiopeia is low in the northwest.

Sunrise (Mid-Month): Altair is rising while Scorpius’ Antares (looking like the Scorpion’s angry burnt-red eye) is low at due south. Vega is high in the northeast, with Deneb below it and to the left. The great trapezoid of Corvus is low in the southwest. Leo is low in the west while Capella sets in the northwest.

Mercury is barely visible in the east, just before sunrise, early in the month. It is completely in the sun by February 28.

Venus rises in the SE only about half an hour ahead of the sun.

Mars is smack next to Venus, low in the pre-dawn eastern sky. Their closest approach is February 22, only one moon-width apart.

Jupiter, in the Ram, is high in the SW at sunset, setting at 11:30 p.m. Look for its Valentine’s Day close approach to the crescent moon.

Saturn, in the Water Carrier, is barely visible low in the WSW at sunset, setting just after the sun.

Notable Space Missions: Moon missions have become quite the fashion lately. Intuitive Machines plans to launch a lunar lander on a Falcon 9 booster in mid to late February. The company’s Nova-C lander has been developed under a NASA demonstration program where the agency funds a company to run a lunar mission for them.

Frank Sanders, a spectrum scientist at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Boulder, takes astronomy-related inquiries at backyardastronomy1@gmail.com.