Hi all,
Trying out this posting thing with some astronomical stuff I've found on the net, to expand on some of the things Julie showed us.
First up, NASA publishes an astronomical picture of the day, found here:
NASA
They're usually pretty cool, and they get astronomers to write out comments on each. In particular, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field is a pretty amazing example of just how big the universe is.
Finally, the real gem in mind-blowing scale is this animation:
Planetary and Stellar size comparisons
Not only is the Sun unremarkable as stars go, it's also really small compared to some of 'em! For reference, Betelgeuse (one of the stars in that comparison), a red supergiant, were in the place of our own star, the edges of it would stretch past the orbit of Mars - engulfing the Earth.
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5 comments:
I checked out the NASA site a week or so ago after hearing on the radio that the heliosphere is not round, but in in fact squashed a bit. I don't fully understand the consequences of this, but am sure it is huge. I love the animations!
Anything that spins is actually squashed a little bit. The Earth is a little wider than it is tall (so, around on the equator is more distance than pole to pole). It's the same physical force that makes older galaxies flatter, and is also the reason the planets are more or less on the same plane (because they came together out of a squashed-out sphere of dust).
i watched the planet/star scale .gif and it was interesting and reminded me of the Eames film "Power of Ten", except that it falls short in that it doesn't make a smooth animation of the scale change as the Eames film. I can see a scientist, who is used to seeing scale and relativism in the extremes, but this image could be vastly improved for the layman. I am reminded by Carl Sagan's extremely tactful writing with the layman in mind that the voice of hard science doesn't take enough time (in most cases) to truly empathize with and then convey to the average person such stretches of context as the 100-times-the-size-of-earth sense of scale change. Witness how many scientists will say something like "there are 10x(20) ("ten to the twentieth power") stars in the universe and expect the recipient of such information to be dazzled. We simply do not buy groceries, gas, and pay taxes in powers-of-ten expressions...
This NASA site is truly a half-assed attempt to really reach the average person with this issue of scale (our planets, sun, other stars), in my opinion.
Hard science needs to make a real effort to connect with the non-academic and not just wait for writers like Sagan to come along. They need to cultivate such people and give them respect (which Sagan did not have entirely from the scientific community, sadly).
David's comment reminds me of the installation that Stan's Cafe did at TBA 06 - using grains of rice to illustrate data points. It was visually striking, concrete and accurate, pleasing the data nerd in me and the artist.
http://www.stanscafe.co.uk/ofallthepeople/index.html
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