10 ms·

Just FYI the sizes of the planets, stars, and their orbits are not to scale at all. To get an idea of how empty space is, there are 63,360 inches in a mile, and

by ggreer 5mo ago

Just FYI the sizes of the planets, stars, and their orbits are not to scale at all. To get an idea of how empty space is, there are 63,360 inches in a mile, and 63,239 astronomical units in a light-year. So if you scaled everything down such that Earth was 1 inch from the Sun, Neptune would be 30 inches away and Alpha Centauri would be 4 miles away. If you were using a 4k display and had the Sun and Alpha Centauri visible at opposite sides of the display, the orbit of Neptune would be in the same pixel as the Sun.

hnuser123456 5mo ago
Mercury is orbiting partially inside the Sun, and Jupiter is nearly as wide as the Sun when it should be 1/10 as much, so the planet nodes should be scaled down 10x relative to the Sun. Also, I did a top-down pixel measurement, where I could see the distance to Tau Ceti as well as the orbit of Neptune. The radius of Neptune's orbit was 32px, while the distance to Tau Ceti was 1152px, for a ratio of 36, when in reality, Tau Ceti is 11.9 ly away, while Neptune has an orbit radius of 30 AU, which means Tau Ceti is around 25,000 Neptune orbits away, so the planet orbit scale is too big (or distance to other stars too small) by a factor of ~694 (25000/36) Edit: Since this was top-down, the vertical displacement didn't factor into the distance, which also contributed to Tau Ceti appearing too close on screen, so the error is slightly better than that, maybe a factor of 600. Edit 2: Tau Ceti is rendered at 3.652 pc × 3 world units/pc = 10.956 world units Neptune’s orbit radius is rendered as 30.05 AU × 0.0065 world units/AU = 0.195325 world units The rendered ratio is 10.956 / 0.195325 = 56.09 Neptune-orbit radii The real ratio should be 25,067.5 Neptune-orbit radii The scale error = 25,067.5 / 56.09 = 446.9×
- Reason077 5mo ago
  Also, since we're nit-picking, the positions of the planets are not being updated in real time. For example, I know that Venus and Jupiter are currently approaching conjunction: there are spectacular views of them both at sunset right now here in the Southern Hemisphere!
- ForOldHack 5mo ago
  Thanks: All your math checks out.
api 5mo ago
Even sci-fi writers that try to get this right have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. "It's called space for a reason." When I saw the series adaptation of The Expanse, it was really obvious they played a lot of artistic license to make it exciting. A real space battle would be dots firing invisible dots at each other. "Close quarter battle" would be within something like 2000 kilometers, maybe more. That is close.
- the_af 5mo ago
  > When I saw the series adaptation of The Expanse, it was really obvious they played a lot of artistic license to make it exciting. A real space battle would be dots firing invisible dots at each other. "Close quarter battle" would be within something like 2000 kilometers, maybe more. That is close. This is noteworthy because The Expanse tried to get this better than other scifi, say Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or Star Wars (ok, space opera), where engagements take place at absurdly short ranges. In The Expanse you see the spaceships are really far apart, mostly dots to each other, and the engagements are (mostly) at really long torpedo ranges, with the exception of those cool scenes using PDCs. You get all those awesome shots where one spaceship sees the other as a tiny dot, then the camera zooms in dramatically to the other point of view. Cool! And still, engagements are far too close range. But they "feel" long range in The Expanse, I think they got that visually right. I cannot blame them because I haven't seen anything any space combat in shows or movies that is even half as exciting and well done.
  - manmal 5mo ago
    The Expanse also was (for me) the first to introduce the concept of a braking burn. Star Wars ships just stop without turning around - can’t unsee it. I think the way X-wing fighters “fly” also wouldn’t work at all, I don’t see any reaction mass coming out the sides.
    - QuercusMax 5mo ago
      Babylon 5 was the only show in the 90s that actually had any sort of physics based space combat (as opposed to Star Wars-style "they're really just airplanes but we're pretending it's space").
dylan604 5mo ago
Sure, but why does this need to be to scale. Isn't the point more to get the humans a way of understanding where things are relatively? Navigating the map makes it interesting in being able to interactively see where some of the stars are relative to each other. Seeing Regulus and Castor/Pollux from this perspective is much different than on terra firma.
- foxglacier 5mo ago
  It can't do that if it's not to scale! And who knows where the errors are? Neptune's orbit is way too big compared to Alpha Centauri. Are other stars also way too close compared to that? I can't stand these intentionally misleading education images of stuff. You have to work at undoing the artistic license of the author before it's useful.
  - dylan604 5mo ago
    We seem to be conflating the actual navigation computer with a display to show the humans information. If it were to scale, it would effectively be useless to the human as the scale of space is just too damn big to fit in some sort of navigation display. However, the actual navigation computer can be as accurate as necessary to not become Lost in Space. That's an entirely different franchise
Mogzol 5mo ago
Another comparison: if you count the "solar system" as ending at Neptune's orbit (obviously it extends much further, but just for the sake of comparison), then you could fit ~4465 "solar systems" in between our sun and the closest star, Proxima Centauri.
- didgetmaster 5mo ago
  As I understand it, there is no consensus on the size of our solar system. We can measure the orbits of the planets, but it is much harder to measure where the Kuiper Belt or the Oort cloud ends. Estimates on both of those vary greatly.
estetlinus 5mo ago
FYI we have a up to scale model of the solar system in Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System Come visit!
- signalbright 5mo ago
  Wow. Such an awesome idea! Thank you, you made my day
- tintor 5mo ago
  That is awesome!
- hoppyhoppy2 5mo ago
  That looks really cool! I've visited scale models of the solar system in Eugene, Oregon[1] and Norwich, Vermont[2], but neither one is anywhere near that size. [1] https://eugenesciencecenter.org/exhibits/eugene-solar-system-trail/ https://eugenesciencecenter.org/exhibits/eugene-solar-system... [2] https://montshire.org/exhibit/exhibits/outdoor-discovery-trails/planet-walk-3-0-miles-roundtrip/ https://montshire.org/exhibit/exhibits/outdoor-discovery-tra...
- etoxin 5mo ago
  Here in Australia we have earths largest scale model of our solar system. https://www.nsw.gov.au/visiting-and-exploring-nsw/locations-and-attractions/worlds-largest-virtual-solar-system-drive https://www.nsw.gov.au/visiting-and-exploring-nsw/locations-...
  - perilunar 5mo ago
    No, the one in Sweden is bigger. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model#Permanent_true_scale_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model#Permanent_t...
- chasil 5mo ago
  There is one in Corpus Christi (Texas) that I've seen. https://www.visitcorpuschristi.com/blog/post/things-to-do-on-the-corpus-christi-downtown-seawall/ https://www.visitcorpuschristi.com/blog/post/things-to-do-on...
MadnessASAP 5mo ago
You are technically correct, the best kind of correct. However! That would be a terrible UX/UI experience. While showing distances on a linear scale is accurate, it fails to capture all the information a person in an interstellar ship may wish to see. Something like logarithmic distances would better capture information like "Am I about to crash into the star or enter a nice orbit" while still showing the full picture of where you are in relation to where you're going and where you came from. No idea of that's what happened here, just a thought, I'm not an expert in starship computer interface design.
austin-cheney 5mo ago
I suspect this lack of scale on the planets was intentional from a usability perspective, because otherwise the planets be bits of dark dust that would be really hard to find. Jupiter has 11x more diameter than Earth and the Sun is 109x larger. When you consider the size of the solar system (including the Oort cloud) the Sun itself is bit a spec of tiny dust.

by ggreer 5mo ago

hnuser123456 5mo ago

Mercury is orbiting partially inside the Sun, and Jupiter is nearly as wide as the Sun when it should be 1/10 as much, so the planet nodes should be scaled down 10x relative to the Sun. Also, I did a top-down pixel measurement, where I could see the distance to Tau Ceti as well as the orbit of Neptune. The radius of Neptune's orbit was 32px, while the distance to Tau Ceti was 1152px, for a ratio of 36, when in reality, Tau Ceti is 11.9 ly away, while Neptune has an orbit radius of 30 AU, which means Tau Ceti is around 25,000 Neptune orbits away, so the planet orbit scale is too big (or distance to other stars too small) by a factor of ~694 (25000/36) Edit: Since this was top-down, the vertical displacement didn't factor into the distance, which also contributed to Tau Ceti appearing too close on screen, so the error is slightly better than that, maybe a factor of 600. Edit 2: Tau Ceti is rendered at 3.652 pc × 3 world units/pc = 10.956 world units Neptune’s orbit radius is rendered as 30.05 AU × 0.0065 world units/AU = 0.195325 world units The rendered ratio is 10.956 / 0.195325 = 56.09 Neptune-orbit radii The real ratio should be 25,067.5 Neptune-orbit radii The scale error = 25,067.5 / 56.09 = 446.9×

Reason077 5mo ago
Also, since we're nit-picking, the positions of the planets are not being updated in real time. For example, I know that Venus and Jupiter are currently approaching conjunction: there are spectacular views of them both at sunset right now here in the Southern Hemisphere!
ForOldHack 5mo ago
Thanks: All your math checks out.

api 5mo ago

Even sci-fi writers that try to get this right have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. "It's called space for a reason." When I saw the series adaptation of The Expanse, it was really obvious they played a lot of artistic license to make it exciting. A real space battle would be dots firing invisible dots at each other. "Close quarter battle" would be within something like 2000 kilometers, maybe more. That is close.

the_af 5mo ago
> When I saw the series adaptation of The Expanse, it was really obvious they played a lot of artistic license to make it exciting. A real space battle would be dots firing invisible dots at each other. "Close quarter battle" would be within something like 2000 kilometers, maybe more. That is close. This is noteworthy because The Expanse tried to get this better than other scifi, say Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or Star Wars (ok, space opera), where engagements take place at absurdly short ranges. In The Expanse you see the spaceships are really far apart, mostly dots to each other, and the engagements are (mostly) at really long torpedo ranges, with the exception of those cool scenes using PDCs. You get all those awesome shots where one spaceship sees the other as a tiny dot, then the camera zooms in dramatically to the other point of view. Cool! And still, engagements are far too close range. But they "feel" long range in The Expanse, I think they got that visually right. I cannot blame them because I haven't seen anything any space combat in shows or movies that is even half as exciting and well done.
- manmal 5mo ago
  The Expanse also was (for me) the first to introduce the concept of a braking burn. Star Wars ships just stop without turning around - can’t unsee it. I think the way X-wing fighters “fly” also wouldn’t work at all, I don’t see any reaction mass coming out the sides.
  - QuercusMax 5mo ago
    Babylon 5 was the only show in the 90s that actually had any sort of physics based space combat (as opposed to Star Wars-style "they're really just airplanes but we're pretending it's space").

dylan604 5mo ago

Sure, but why does this need to be to scale. Isn't the point more to get the humans a way of understanding where things are relatively? Navigating the map makes it interesting in being able to interactively see where some of the stars are relative to each other. Seeing Regulus and Castor/Pollux from this perspective is much different than on terra firma.

foxglacier 5mo ago
It can't do that if it's not to scale! And who knows where the errors are? Neptune's orbit is way too big compared to Alpha Centauri. Are other stars also way too close compared to that? I can't stand these intentionally misleading education images of stuff. You have to work at undoing the artistic license of the author before it's useful.
- dylan604 5mo ago
  We seem to be conflating the actual navigation computer with a display to show the humans information. If it were to scale, it would effectively be useless to the human as the scale of space is just too damn big to fit in some sort of navigation display. However, the actual navigation computer can be as accurate as necessary to not become Lost in Space. That's an entirely different franchise

Mogzol 5mo ago

Another comparison: if you count the "solar system" as ending at Neptune's orbit (obviously it extends much further, but just for the sake of comparison), then you could fit ~4465 "solar systems" in between our sun and the closest star, Proxima Centauri.

didgetmaster 5mo ago
As I understand it, there is no consensus on the size of our solar system. We can measure the orbits of the planets, but it is much harder to measure where the Kuiper Belt or the Oort cloud ends. Estimates on both of those vary greatly.

estetlinus 5mo ago

FYI we have a up to scale model of the solar system in Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System Come visit!

signalbright 5mo ago
Wow. Such an awesome idea! Thank you, you made my day
tintor 5mo ago
That is awesome!
hoppyhoppy2 5mo ago
That looks really cool! I've visited scale models of the solar system in Eugene, Oregon[1] and Norwich, Vermont[2], but neither one is anywhere near that size. [1] https://eugenesciencecenter.org/exhibits/eugene-solar-system-trail/ https://eugenesciencecenter.org/exhibits/eugene-solar-system... [2] https://montshire.org/exhibit/exhibits/outdoor-discovery-trails/planet-walk-3-0-miles-roundtrip/ https://montshire.org/exhibit/exhibits/outdoor-discovery-tra...
etoxin 5mo ago
Here in Australia we have earths largest scale model of our solar system. https://www.nsw.gov.au/visiting-and-exploring-nsw/locations-and-attractions/worlds-largest-virtual-solar-system-drive https://www.nsw.gov.au/visiting-and-exploring-nsw/locations-...
- perilunar 5mo ago
  No, the one in Sweden is bigger. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model#Permanent_true_scale_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model#Permanent_t...
chasil 5mo ago
There is one in Corpus Christi (Texas) that I've seen. https://www.visitcorpuschristi.com/blog/post/things-to-do-on-the-corpus-christi-downtown-seawall/ https://www.visitcorpuschristi.com/blog/post/things-to-do-on...

MadnessASAP 5mo ago

You are technically correct, the best kind of correct. However! That would be a terrible UX/UI experience. While showing distances on a linear scale is accurate, it fails to capture all the information a person in an interstellar ship may wish to see. Something like logarithmic distances would better capture information like "Am I about to crash into the star or enter a nice orbit" while still showing the full picture of where you are in relation to where you're going and where you came from. No idea of that's what happened here, just a thought, I'm not an expert in starship computer interface design.

austin-cheney 5mo ago

I suspect this lack of scale on the planets was intentional from a usability perspective, because otherwise the planets be bits of dark dust that would be really hard to find. Jupiter has 11x more diameter than Earth and the Sun is 109x larger. When you consider the size of the solar system (including the Oort cloud) the Sun itself is bit a spec of tiny dust.