The trail can be walked in either direction; the ‘Sun’ being situated on the east summit of Balgay Hill, (see photo left) and Pluto is represented by the Mills Observatory itself. Each standing stone has an oval plaque set into it, with a description of the planet it represents.
Walking the trail from one end to the other provides the walker with a good impression of the scale of the solar system, and in particular how distant the outer planets are from the Sun, compared to the inner planets. Indeed, from the distance of Neptune, the Sun simply looks like a very bright star, rather than the substantial disk that we see from Earth. As well as that, of course, the walker has the opportunity to learn about the planets and their various characteristics.
