Astronomer’s Full-Scale Solar System Animation Will Blow You Away
How many times have you not heard phrases that suggest that our planet is a speck of dust in space? When we think of the great worlds and celestial bodies that surround us, the idea does not sound so far-fetched. Especially when watching videos like the one that went viral this weekend.
Planetary astronomer James O’Donoghue of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) tweeted a short animation that begins with the dwarf planet Ceres and then scales other Solar System objects, including Earth, before showing the greatness of the Sun.
He also posted a better quality version of the video on Youtube .
If you have done the Solar System to scale as a school project, you may be familiar with this. But perhaps you never realized how fast Jupiter is compared to Earth .
The 45-second long video has been viewed 15 million times, as of this writing. But the clip is well worth spending those seconds looking at.
Sizes, tilts, and rotations are to scale. The only detail is that they are not in their orbits. This is so that they can all be seen in the same frame.
Earth is 12,742 kilometers wide, while Jupiter is 139,820 kilometers, or 10 times larger in diameter.
The diameter of the Sun is 10 times larger than Jupiter and more than 100 times larger than Earth. In other words, about a million Earths could fit in the Sun. Here you can read more curiosities of the solar system , 50 curiosities of the Sun and 29 curiosities of the Earth .
The astronomer has done an amazing job creating this clip. This way we can get to know our peculiar neighborhood within the universe a little better. (By the way, do not miss some curious facts of the universe in this blog).
What do you think?
[via Science Alert ]
