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A Snapshot of the Plot of the Inner Solar System

Posted by michael on from the got-rocks? dept.

BawbBitchen writes "The BBC is running an interesting story about a bunch of Astronomers who have produced a snapshot of the Solar System as of 26 July 2002. Here is the full image and here is a 5.1MB animated GIF (each frame is 961 x 961 pixels) of the map. The credits say it was generated on an OpenVMS system using the PGPLOT graphics library and the animation was done on a RISC OS 4.03 system."

2 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Re:misleading by Christopher+Thomas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The project is really cool, and the plots are fascinating. However, the plots that are produced are misleading. The role of science and the media is a growing concern, and it [slashdot.org] was on slashdot earlier today.

    Would you be happier if they put a little sticker on the picture saying "object size is not to scale"?

    They're constrained by the fact that we actually have to be able to _see_ objects on the plot, and be able to pick out the more important objects (like planets) from the hordes of smaller objects sprinkled about the plot.

    Looks like a decent plot to me.

  2. Re:misleading by Hacker'sEdict · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Plus the fact that a 3d enviroment can't fully be projected onto a 2d page.