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Riding Light: A journey of a photon through our solar system

submitted by Zawash

9 years 2 months 2 weeks ago

aswinehart.com: After nerding out on some astronomy books and documentaries, I wanted to illustrate how slow the speed of light is in relation to the vast size of the universe. This animation shows, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system.

Vimeo: In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective.
I've taken liberties with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually "sees" or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall I've kept the size and distances of all the objects as accurate as possible. I also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter as I wanted to keep the running length below an hour.