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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."

3 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Never mind the NEOs, check out the asteroid belt! by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Check out all that stuff floating outside Mars orbit!

    It's icy asteroids outside the icing point of the sun- at that distance water is in the form of ice and sublimes only over enormous timescales.

    Water is an okish fuel for rockets- the ISP of steam is about 190 seconds, just under half the thrust of the space shuttle main engines, even if you don't split it into hydrogen and oxygen.

    Basically, if you can reach that, the whole solar system is open to you- so much fuel you wouldn't know which way to go first...

    --

    -WolfWithoutAClause

    "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
  2. misleading by capt.Hij · · Score: 4, Informative
    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 was on slashdot earlier today.

    When you look at the plots it looks like the whole space is filled. This is not even close to representing the true picture since the spacial scales are so large, the actual masses are really smaller than pinpoints. The media is putting out misleading pictures without giving any explanation about the scale, and it looks like we are sitting inside a virtual fog bank of asteroids.

    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.