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Solar System Scope?
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38 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
To be clear, the orbital periods of the planets are not neat ratios of one another, with regular perfect alignments. I assume it was portrayed that way just to show one revolution of each planet and/or make the graphic loop better. (In the graphic Neptune completes one revolution in the time it takes Earth to make six; in reality a Neptunian year lasts about 165 Earth years.)
For a more accurate representation of the orbits in our system check out this visualizer: http://www.solarsystemscope.com/
Zoom out, view it from the "top," speed it up, and set the orbits to realistic. Edit: Actually, the Orrery model may be better for getting the initial impression of orbital periods; just know that it's not at all accurate regarding size and shape of orbits.
here's another example using Solar System Scope[1] with 'realistic orbits' selected. Planets enlarged for emphasis. As you can see, from the Earth's point of view, the planets seem to be in line at this current position of their orbit.
![here's another example using Solar System Scope[1]](http://i.imgur.com/1YTooU5.jpg){kind=link}
I'll say the same thing now that I did the last time I saw this posted here:
The orbital periods of the planets are not neat ratios of one another as they appear in the left side of this gif. The orbits do not increase in size with that regularity, the planets do not all move at the same speed along those orbits, and they do not all perfectly align every time Neptune completes a revolution.
For example: in the graphic Neptune completes one revolution in the time it takes Earth to complete six; in reality a Neptunian year lasts about 165 Earth years.
I assume this graphic portrays the solar system the way it does in order to cram a single revolution of each planet into a short gif and/or make the graphic loop better. I understand that the orbital periods are beside the point of the gif and that it still makes its main point about the sensibility of heliocentrism over geocentrism, but every time it's posted I see people assume it is completely accurate. It really needs a footnote explaining that essentially nothing in the graphic is to scale.
For a more accurate representation of the orbits in our system check out this visualizer: http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ Zoom out, view it from the "top," and speed up the simulation. That will give you an idea of the relative time involved, and after that you can set the orbits to "Realistic" rather than "Orrery" to get a better idea the sizes and shapes of the orbits.
An "accurate" representation of our solar system
With decent background music, make sure you play around with the settings to your left and turn on "Realistic Model" and "Realistic Sizes" Also the pathing on comets/planets/etc. is fun to see.
Go to the 24th of May 2014 to see how "close" "209P/LINEAR" was to us!
It was "only" 0.0554 AU (8'290'000 km) away from us. That's about 650 Earths from us! It is however not the closest comet in recorded history though, that goes to "D/1770 L1" which passed at 0.0151 AU (~2'260'000 km) which is about 180 Earths from us.
Actually it can be night in South and Central America while it's night in Europe. http://www.solarsystemscope.com/daylightmap/
I guess the title goes to the Mongols. If you can even call theirs an empire.
During my re-watch I used this one to check for daylight continuities. I found that for the most part they did a very good job of keeping the right (or at least plausible) daylight hours. There were some scenes, though, that just wouldn't be possible. Also, Kala and her family are up at 2-4 in the morning almost every night :P
I really wish articles wouldn't flat-out lie in their headlines just to get views. Of course there will be tons of planets on the ecliptic. Our Solar System is a disk. By definition (by necessity), planets are located near the ecliptic. This is not the same as being aligned.
If you go out to the beach and take a picture of the ocean, you'll see that all the boats are near the horizon. Does that mean that the boats are aligned?
Solar System Scope is a great resource that can show you the positions of all the planets, their major moons, the five official dwarf planets, several comets, the constellations, and a few dozen of the named stars.
You can change the date, play it forward or backward as much as you want. If you click on a planet it will also show you information about the planet and a cutaway view of the planet's interior structure. You can click on a planet or moon and drag it around in its orbit, and the time/date will be adjusted accordingly, and all the other bodies will move with it. Be sure to select 'realistic model' in the options to get a picture of the actual scale of the solar system (although the size of the planets will still appear larger-than-life since you couldn't see them otherwise).
It also gives you a visualization of where these objects appear on our night sky, from a vantage point anywhere on Earth (the telescope button on the left panel).
Be aware that when you zoom in on the dwarf planets, it gives a visualization of their surface that has some fictionalized texture and detail, since we can't actually get detailed images of the dwarf planets due to their distance and tininess. At least not until the New Horizons probe reaches Pluto this July.
Well for one thing Pluto orbits in a different plane than the planets. You can play with this and see that the paths don't cross.
Even if they were in the same plane, Neptune orbits the sun exactly three times every time Pluto does twice. That means that every two Plutonian years the relative positions of the two are reset, so if they don't crash then, they never will.
Another answer is that there's speculation that Pluto used to be a moon of Neptune. In those days they were pretty close.
This will show you the position of Earth for whatever date you select, and it's 3D:
http://www.solarsystemscope.com/
On a large-scale map that includes the entire galaxy the motion of Earth is far too small to be visible, except on a time scale of millions of years. In that case the motion would look like this:
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-8f69a0f62c9148a9cbb02344b5d0d82d-c
I can't see if from home right now, but according to Solar System Scope you have both the Sun and Jupiter. As I suppose you don't mean the Sun, the answer should be Jupiter.
Let me bring my 2 cents as well on this marvelous topic: Solar System Scope You can set the scale to a realistic one and can experience some space mission like the Rosetta one (showing the orbit assists and so on). I'm also a big fan of Stellarium both on PC and mobile. I'll try Celestia as I'm running Ubuntu at home I seem to have no chance to run Space Engine. Oh and also, I feel cheated by Sean Murray like everyone else.
Short answer is no, but use this to find out where you can see it: http://www.solarsystemscope.com/
(switch to panoramatic view and input your coordinates)
Edit: And this for reference: http://media.skysurvey.org/interactive360/index.html
Stellarium is great for visualizing what you see at any given time. Check out Solar System Scope to understand why you see what you see.
If you spend a couple of minutes in heliocentric mode you be able to understand things like:
- Why November was a great time to launch Mars missions.
- Why inferior planets go thru waxing and waning phases, but superior planets do not.
- When planets will be in opposition or conjunction.
- relative speeds of orbits.
- find great dates for observing. eg July of 2020 for viewing Jupiter and Saturn.
This is a pretty cool site which basically describes what /u/starcraftre is talking about. You can rotate around in 3d and see how the planets are lining up from any angle. Grab and drag a planet to try it.
I found a pretty good lineup on 06 Apr 3152
It's a problem with the way the day/night division is shown on that map he uses, not a problem with the spherical Earth. Instead of taking the edge of the darkest line on the map, take the edge of the lightest one. I just did it, and guess what -- zero issue.
In fact, if you compare the lightest edge on the map he uses with the clear-cut edge on this map it becomes clear that it's a matter of how the data is being displayed.
Now who's lying and being intellectually dishonest?
Edit: What's even funnier is that the guy doesn't even have basic reading comprehension. On the map shown on timeanddate.com that he uses, it even has a key that explains each line. The edge of civil twilight is the terminator line, not the edge of night that he uses. The civil twilight line marks where the sun would actually dip below the horizon, where the night line shows where there is no longer the sun's glow in the sky from over the horizon.
It also might have to do with the fact that mars and the earth don't orbit one behind the other. Here's a website claiming to show their actual current positions: http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ Note that Mars and earth are almost on opposite sides of the sun.
"Illustration", they are using Solar System Scope.
Three months ago on another Subreddit I used the same program to prove the Enterprise's grand tour style flight out of the solar system in Star Trek: The Motion Picture was possible.
If this is the level of "proof" someone needs then Star Trek is real, James Kirk will exist and The Sisko (PBUH) is the Messiah.
Well, both Venus and Mercury would be heading towards the Sun at this time in this image. Well, I'm saying it's Mercury!=P From this perspective, it's closer to the Sun than Venus. Check out http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ and choose "Telescopic View"
It's not really an answer, but if you use this in realistic mode with today's time you'll see that there are no objects between us and Pluto.
As to how it sends data well, an antenna on both ends and some patience...
They are. This 3D visualization shows it quite well — drag it so that the you're looking at the solar system from the side, and then click the play button at the bottom to set it to high-speed. You'll also be able to see that there are a number of non-planets in skew orbits, like Ceres and Pluto.
If you use this website to view the current location of the planets, you should see that Venus and Earth are at about a 90° angle relative to the Sun right now. This is a good balance between two effects:
- When Venus is close to Earth it looks big and we get a closer view, but it's also a "crescent Venus" (just like the Moon has phases, so does Venus) so not much of its illuminated side is facing us.
- When Venus is far away from Earth, we see a "full Venus" and see most of its illuminated side, but it's more distant and fainter then.
So this halfway orientation gives us a sort-of near view of a "gibbous Venus" and that's pretty bright.
Venus' brightness comes from being completely covered in clouds and reflecting so much sunlight. Earth is about the same size, somewhat further away from the Sun, and it looks like we're only about 70% covered with clouds. So I'd say someone orbiting around Venus would see a very bright Earth right now, but not quite as bright as Venus is to us.
EDIT - have a play with this http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ It's obviously not to scale, but it should hep you to understand what's going on
Take three cups.
Put one in front of you, another about a foot away from that one, and the third as far away as you can in the room. The one right in front of you is earth. The handle is where you are. Now rotate the cup. As it rotates, imagine the window is the sun. Each time it rotates you get a day/night cycle. That rotation happens every 24 hours. As you can see, every day, relative to where you (the handle) are, the other two cups can be above or below the horizon.
Now point the handle at the moon, and note where the third cup is in relation.
The moon rotates around the earth once every 28 days. So for every 28 times the cup in front of you spins around, the second cup orbits all the way around the first cup.
The third cup is also moving. However, not very much relative to the other two.
So hopefully, you can see, that because everything in the system is moving it's entirely possible for the moon to be one side of Jupiter one night, and the other side of Jupiter the next night. It will keep travelling away from jupiter, until about 28 days later or so, it will cross again.
Illuminated side?
Also, sorry. I tried to figure this out for you but the image is a compilation of multiple pictures and the only time period given was "late 1990s" so I can't pintpoint where the moon was in relation to the planet for you. Still, here: http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ for fun.
I don't have experience with any of those physical models, but an alternative is software simulation. There are several websites that do this.
This one is cool, except for the new age music (which can be turned off).
I also have a game/simulation called Universe Sandbox which is pretty cool. It's $10 on Steam but is often on sale.
Well i dont know if it is the same direction, you can drink a coffee with us on the moon :)
its possible shall we meet at
25 may 2016 my place - Moonlavare 324
-- Directions http://www.solarsystemscope.com/
Paying attention to the planets does help. A lot. But you have to abandon the old schedule of the days and hours. Remember that those were made in the days when Galileo got put on house arrest for presenting a heliocentric theory of the universe. Our understanding of the planets has grown since then. You should look for something like http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ that will help you keep proper track of the planets.
There's plenty of sites that will simulate things like this. I used this one to get Pluto's position.
Looks like Pluto was close to the same angle as Mars -- basically the 7:00 position in your image.
Open this, zoom in a bit, and look at the light and dark sides of earth and the moon. imagine yourself standing on earth and looking at the moon.
Note where the Sun is... http://www.solarsystemscope.com
Try this! Solar System Scope is a beautiful website that allows you to navigate the solar system! You can explore all the planets, find out facts about them, look at their individual layers, and simulate their orbits! You can also see a map of the constellations and even have them correspond t your current location!
http://www.solarsystemscope.com/
EDIT: Also, there is an Interstellar game on iPhone that's pretty interesting, you and other people create solar systems and the goal is to pilot the ship around the sun and planets to scan them while accounting for fuel, solar energy, and gravity. There's a also a similar game where you launch the Voyager I probe on a trajectory to investigate the different planets and moons in the solar system while accounting for gravity and orbit.
The planets are not lined up in a straight line. In any direction. So if it went by jupiter , pluto is in the opposite direction on the other side of our yellow dwarf star.
Some things to think about before I answer this: Is the sun always directly overhead (as in 90 degrees perpendicular to the earth) all year? Maybe you get to see this in summer but in winter you'll find it lower on the horizon, right? Why is that?
That's because the world is not only round but it's tilted as we orbit the sun. This means that at one extreme of our orbit the southern hemisphere gets a dose of sun and at the extreme the northern hemisphere gets it's dose.
I like this tool to see where the sun is. In the top left hand corner hit the "set time" button and then advance the month of the year. Watch the sun loop around in a figure 8.
http://www.solarsystemscope.com/daylightmap/
Noon is defined as when the sun is highest point in the sky which is when it's going past the reference point of due south (true south). Technically, this includes when the sun isn't visible from your location and you can't see it like winter in Antarctica.
Everyone else has this covered, but if you'd like to get another angle on what you saw, here is a good online model of the solar system. You can dial in any date and time to get the position of the planets at that time. Dial in last night (or anytime around that really, and you'll see that Jupiter and Venus are very close to the same visual angle from Earth. The default view doesn't correctly size the orbits, so make sure to change to the "Realistic Model" (and optionally, Realistic sizes) from the gear icon.
Well, that's just the neatest website since Al Gore invented the internet. Is there a site similar to this that shows the orbits as well as the inclinations to the orbital plane?
Since it's possible but not probable, I will most likely get everything as close to natural as I can, then give the rotation of the one inhabited moon supernatural godly causes.
Edit: I've found this 3D simulation http://www.solarsystemscope.com/
BetterExplained - a good website that make me don't hate math anymore :)
Prezi - online presentation software
Solar System Scope - online simulation of solar system
I hope those links are interesting for you.
I'd like Spirits please. Thank you for the chance & the giveaway!
My guess is that it might be a piece of ISON. If you go to the simulator, you can see that the Earth is currently passing directly through ISON's path. Screenshot. We started crossing on Jan 12th and will be out of the comet's debris path on the 19th.
Keed your eyes to the sky, there may be more to come!
