Tag Archives: Mercury

“Riding Light” – Animation by Alphonse Swinehart

February 5th, 2015 | Space

Riding Light Vimeo

“Riding Light” is a new, beautiful animation by Alphonse Swinehart. In the 45-minute journey, you will travel with light on its way from the Sun to Jupiter. I love videos like this because they really help me gain a better appreciation for the scale of our Universe. If you watch light travel from Earth to Mars, for example, you will realize how difficult it will be to successfully complete a manned exploration mission to the red planet. There’s just so much emptiness between the planetary masses…

A word from the creators:

“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.

Design & Animation: Alphonse Swinehart / aswinehart.com
Music: Steve Reich “Music for 18 Musicians”
Performed by: Eighth Blackbird / eighthblackbird.org

-RSB

Four Planet Sunset

June 13th, 2013 | Space

Four Planet Sunset

Four Planet Sunset

Chris Kotsiopoulos recently shot 60 photos of the incredible triple planet conjunction on May 25th of this year. Venus, Jupiter, and and Mercury (as well as the star Elnath (Beta Tauri) on the far right) can be seen dropping across a beautiful sunset over the Alikes salt lake near Kos Island in Greece.  It’s a pretty amazing time-lapse.
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Look for the next triple conjunction in October of 2015.

Specs of the photo: Camera Model Canon EOS 550D, Shooting Date/Time 25/5/2013 20:59 – 21:30, Author  Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1 – 8 sec, Av( Aperture Value ) 5 – 7.1, ISO Speed 200 – 400, Lens Canon EF50mm f/1.8 II, Focal Length 50.0 mm

Find more photography from Chris at his site, Greek Sky.

-RSB

[via APOD]