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Is there any good way to plot multiple asteroids while maintaining their relative size ie. handling scaling correctly? The problem with plotting asteroids is t

by bsder 2y ago

Is there any good way to plot multiple asteroids while maintaining their relative size ie. handling scaling correctly? The problem with plotting asteroids is that the "pixel" representing an asteroid is a hugely larger chunk of space relative to the actual size of the asteroid itself. This gives a false feel of density that the asteroid belts simply don't have.

moffkalast 2y ago
The problem with ploting the actual size of asteroids (and planets too for the most part) is that you'd just end up with a black screen even with subpixel rendering.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Indeed, even the largest is literally an invisible dot on an invisible dot — a while back I was playing around and made a video of the actual scale of various megastructures with Earth and the sun for scale, starting with a Halo ring next to Earth, zooming out until it was a dot revealed it was in the middle of a Banks Orbital, zooming out further until that was nearly invisible revealed it was next to a Niven Ringworld, and the zoom continued until you could see the sun. Ceres is the biggest asteroid, is less than 1/10th the diameter of Earth, and orbits the sun between 2.55 and 2.98 times Earth's orbit. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKSRKT0nzM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKSRKT0nzM
tantalor 2y ago
Couple ideas to help with that, 1. Use heatmap i.e. total mass of asteroids at each pixel 2. Use log scale
krisoft 2y ago
> Is there any good way to plot multiple asteroids while maintaining their relative size ie. handling scaling correctly? Sure thing! Just look up the sky. They are all there :) Perfectly to scale even! Or if you want it scaled down look at an empty sheet of paper. That is a true representation of how many asteroids you would see if we would scale the solar system down to fit the paper. In fact I just calculated and the sun itself would be about 0.06mm in diameter if you want to scale down the solar system such that the orbit of Neptune fits on a standard A4 paper. So by all means an empty sheet of paper sounds like a correct visual aid to illustrate the solar system in its entirety, not just the asteroids.

by bsder 2y ago

moffkalast 2y ago

The problem with ploting the actual size of asteroids (and planets too for the most part) is that you'd just end up with a black screen even with subpixel rendering.

ben_w 2y ago
Indeed, even the largest is literally an invisible dot on an invisible dot — a while back I was playing around and made a video of the actual scale of various megastructures with Earth and the sun for scale, starting with a Halo ring next to Earth, zooming out until it was a dot revealed it was in the middle of a Banks Orbital, zooming out further until that was nearly invisible revealed it was next to a Niven Ringworld, and the zoom continued until you could see the sun. Ceres is the biggest asteroid, is less than 1/10th the diameter of Earth, and orbits the sun between 2.55 and 2.98 times Earth's orbit. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKSRKT0nzM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKSRKT0nzM

tantalor 2y ago

Couple ideas to help with that, 1. Use heatmap i.e. total mass of asteroids at each pixel 2. Use log scale

krisoft 2y ago

> Is there any good way to plot multiple asteroids while maintaining their relative size ie. handling scaling correctly? Sure thing! Just look up the sky. They are all there :) Perfectly to scale even! Or if you want it scaled down look at an empty sheet of paper. That is a true representation of how many asteroids you would see if we would scale the solar system down to fit the paper. In fact I just calculated and the sun itself would be about 0.06mm in diameter if you want to scale down the solar system such that the orbit of Neptune fits on a standard A4 paper. So by all means an empty sheet of paper sounds like a correct visual aid to illustrate the solar system in its entirety, not just the asteroids.