We’re used to seeing the night sky rotate around us but this video uses a fixed point in the night sky so instead the earth is rotating.
Tag: astronomy
Solar System to Scale
In line with an earlier post talking about the the scale of the solar system checkout if the moon were 1 pixel gives you a visceral feel for the size of the solar system. I only made it out to Saturn. It took a long, long time to scroll.
It makes you imagine how long an interplanetary trip would take. There is a lot of nothing. It was so boring just scrolling for a few minutes. Just black. No air.
- Traveling from Earth to Mars would take about seven months.
- Earth is at 150M km;
- Mars is at 225M km.
- Jupiter is a 13 month trip and is at the kilometer marker 750M. No rest stops.
End of the Universe
I was under the impression that the Universe would expand, contract, big bang, expand, contract, etc. Apparently there are competing theories where things just fade away. Dark Energy seems to account for the theoretical change.
Anyway, here’s a video explaining the competing theories:
And of course you need a song for that:
R.E.M. – It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)http://assets.bop.fm/embed.js
Solar System
Here is a table if you wanted to make a scale version of the solar system. It’s based on making the Earth a 1in sphere and then gives how far from the Sun each planet should be and how big of a ball to use for each planet.
This is from frink a programming language based on accurate representation of units. If you are into really nerding-out take a look at the unit data which describes lots of possible unit conversions.
| Name | Distance from Sun | Diameter |
|---|---|---|
| Sun | 9 feet, 1.3 in | |
| Mercury | 378 feet, 8.8 in | 0.383 in |
| Venus | 707 feet, 7.6 in | 0.95 in |
| Earth | 978 feet, 4.5 in | 1.0 in |
| Mars | 1490 feet, 8.8 in | 0.533 in |
| Jupiter | 5090 feet, 3.7 in | 11.221 in |
| Saturn | 1 miles, 4068 feet | 9.46 in |
| Uranus | 3 miles, 2936 feet | 4.012 in |
| Neptune | 5 miles, 3011 feet | 3.887 in |
| Pluto | 7 miles, 1715 feet | 0.178 in |
Scaled speed of light: 1.337 mph
TED and Saturn
I watched this TED talk on the Cassini probe to Saturn.
You can grab images here. It’s a great collection especially for setting as backgrounds. Here’s one from Nov 2007:
or this one from Oct 2007:
Pete Ware 