This is really nice! I wish there was a Starlink on/off layer switch, though. Since there are so many Starlink satellites.
Low Earth Orbit Visualization
81–90 of 114 posts
Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
"A poster of our solar system where the sun and planets are at scale would look like a black piece of paper with a tiny white dot in the center." Yes. And therefore a very valuable visualisation of reality. Visualisations at scale are nice and useful, too, but they are misleading if the actual sizes are never shown to the target audience.
From what I remember there are various different depictions for different purposes. Most are just showing order and what they look like visually so the precise scale is a detriment and skipped. Most of the solar system to scale things I've seen in person are multiple blocks long so the planets are a reasonable size, there's not really a reasonable way to print a to scale in both size and distance in a book.
"there's not really a reasonable way to print a to scale in both size and distance in a book."
There is. Just one picture of small dots in lots of black space can give perspective, .. next to the other visualisations. And some books do that.
Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization
#83This is really nice! I wish there was a Starlink on/off layer switch, though. Since there are so many Starlink satellites.
That's the debris toggle, I guess
SCNR
Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization
#84This is really nice! I wish there was a Starlink on/off layer switch, though. Since there are so many Starlink satellites.
That's the debris toggle, I guess SCNR
> That's the debris toggle, I guess
No, unfortunately I don't think so. Startlinks are there even when you "disable debris".
Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization
#85Instinctively I know the scale is off and changes the perception of this as a visualization, but this is still terribly depressing.
This is the opposite of depressing. Look what we've been able to do! Each of those have/had a purpose and reason for being there and we've gotten tremendous benefit from satellites in space.
Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I remember there are various different depictions for different purposes. Most are just showing order and what they look like visually so the precise scale is a detriment and skipped. Most of the solar system to scale things I've seen in person are multiple blocks long so the planets are a reasonable size, there's not really a reasonable way to print a to scale in both size and distance in a book.
"there's not really a reasonable way to print a to scale in both size and distance in a book." There is. Just one picture of small dots in lots of black space can give perspective, .. next to the other visualisations. And some books do that.
Did you check the actual dimensions it would be?!
If you're being accurate in both distance and size scales your smallest dot would be Mercury and the distance from the Sun to Neptune (assuming this is a modern text book and we're dropping Pluto) would be 922000 of those dots. Even if we print it at the higher 1200 PPI [0] used for line art that's ~770 inches, that's a huge image far larger than any reasonable book. You could do it with a fold out but that's it's own expense and unreasonable for inclusion in an actual textbook.
That's why I was saying doing both accurate size and distance is difficult for the solar system.
[0] Images are more often printed at 300 PPI but I'm giving you the best case scenario here.
Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization
#87Objects not to scale. Not even close, and no mention of it (that I saw). Graphing scale honestly is extremely important. A lot of people are convinced our sky is full of satellites because of visualizations like this.
Do you think that some people look at this visualisation and leave with the impression that there are city sized satellites flying above them?
My dude, some people look up at the sky and see airplane contrails and clouds and conclude all sorts of outlandish nonsense.
Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think that some people look at this visualisation and leave with the impression that there are city sized satellites flying above them?
> that there are city sized satellites flying above them I don't think this is so much the issue, as much as that I didn't think about it. I opened it and my first thought was wow, it's packed up there. Didn't consider the size of the things it's displaying relative to things on the surface. There is certainly some merit in ensuring that first impression is accurate.
> I opened it and my first thought was wow, it's packed up there
I mean, it is also pretty packed up there. Considering that a rocket launch has to give every object up there a decently wide berth, it's still a shit ton of moving obstacles that have to be constantly taken into account - the relative size of the gaps between them doesn't really change that equation much.
Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization
#89Objects not to scale. Not even close, and no mention of it (that I saw). Graphing scale honestly is extremely important. A lot of people are convinced our sky is full of satellites because of visualizations like this.
Do you think that some people look at this visualisation and leave with the impression that there are city sized satellites flying above them?
Enough HN users are retarded enough that they'll start talking about Kessler syndrome because they don't understand what they're looking at.
Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I remember there are various different depictions for different purposes. Most are just showing order and what they look like visually so the precise scale is a detriment and skipped. Most of the solar system to scale things I've seen in person are multiple blocks long so the planets are a reasonable size, there's not really a reasonable way to print a to scale in both size and distance in a book.
"there's not really a reasonable way to print a to scale in both size and distance in a book." There is. Just one picture of small dots in lots of black space can give perspective, .. next to the other visualisations. And some books do that.
Most people have never seen a visual of earths layers to scale. The crust, even when thin, is usually not to scale