What Would Neptune Look Like if it Orbited Earth?

By Ben on January 30, 2011 at 1:08 pm | In Blog Posts | No Comments

interesting data visualization.
–Ben

==============

What Would Neptune Look Like if it Orbited Earth?

Here’s an animation I did to make you feel small.

While watching the video of the lunar eclipse I posted the other day I was looking at the curvature of the earth’s shadow on the moon. It made me think about how large the earth might look if an exact copy of it was up there instead of the moon. Soon curiosity got the better of me, and I was animating!

So the basic idea is, each planet you see is the size it would appear in the sky if it shared an orbit with the moon, 380,000 kms from earth. I created this video in After Effects, and because of certain technical considerations had to keep the field of view at 62 degrees. That means the foreground element is not precisely to scale. I realized this after the fact and may update the video at some point in the future. All planets are to correct scale with one another in any case…

http://bradblogspeed.com/what-would-neptune-look-like-if-it-orbited-ea

http://vimeo.com/19231255

Podcast: Monstrous Supernovae

By Michael on January 13, 2011 at 2:37 am | In Audio Podcasts | No Comments

Doug talks with Dr. Rachid Ouyed about monstrous supernovae and the extremely interesting prospect that they may result from the transition from a neutron star to a strange star. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any denser…

You can listen to this podcast using some device to physically move the air. Your ears can detect the pressure waves moving through the air that these devices create and, almost like magic, you can hear the podcast! To do that you could subscribe to the feed (the logical thing to do) or download and/or listen now with this handy link:

 

Download

Here are the links to some of the topics discussed in this podcast:

Rachid Ouyed’s webpage

Quark Nova Project’s webpage – check out the animation under “Multimedia”

“SGR 0418+5729 as an evolved Quark-Nova compact remnant”
Rachid Ouyed, Denis Leahy, Brian Niebergal

“Quark nova imprint in the extreme supernova explosion SN 2006gy: the advent of the Quark Star”
Rachid Ouyed, Mathew Kostka, Nico Koning, Denis Leahy, Wolfgang Steffen

“Predictions for signatures of the quark-nova in superluminous supernovae”
Rachid Ouyed, Denis Leahy, Prashanth Jaikumar

“Quark-Novae, cosmic reionization, and early r-process element production”
Rachid Ouyed, Ralph Pudritz, Prashanth Jaikumar

Quarks

The Strange Quark

This podcast is brought to you by Swinburne Astronomy Online, offering fully online degree programs in astronomy.