On September 30, the first planetary run in Warnemünde took place in the morning with glorious weather and was a lot of fun for everyone involved. A total of 80 participants took part in the 3 and 8 km routes along the planetary path that runs along the Warnemünde promenade and the coast. At lunchtime, there was a guided hike with lots of information, games and fun, before our solar system and planet Earth were presented in more detail in lectures at the Institute for Baltic Sea Research.
 
The event marked the start of the renovation and digitization of the information boards of the planetary path, which was created in the 1980s by the Astronomischer Verein Rostock e.V. and the "Tycho Brahe" astronomical station and depicts our solar system on a scale of 1:1,000,000,000. A team from the Institute of Physics at the University of Rostock raised the impressive sum of €10,000 in the 2023 "Our Universe" university competition to realize the project together with the Rostock Astronomical Society.

The race started with a ship's bell in Warnemünde near the lighthouse at the model of the sun, which is already shining brightly again. The route led the 3-km runners and walkers along the beach promenade to the information board of Saturn, which is actually around 1.5 billion kilometers away from the sun. The 8 km route turned around near Wilhelmshöhe and the information board for Uranus, which is in reality almost 3 billion kilometers away from the sun. The fastest runner here was Michael Havemann in under 32 minutes. The fastest woman over the 8 km was Martina Beese. Nataliia Nepecheft and Conrad Weinert were the fastest over the 3 km.

During the guided hike, participants could collect waypoints in the form of stickers by answering knowledge questions, so that a fully completed trail booklet entitled them to take home prizes donated by the German Aerospace Center, among others. The afternoon lectures were given by doctoral students from the Institute of Physics together with staff from the Institute of Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Kühlungsborn.

More information about the Warnemünde Planet Trail can be found at www.planetenweg-warnemuende.de .