Solar System Pullout

Clearly inspired by the opening scene of "Contact", I created this animation in the late summer of 1997 using POV-Ray raytracer on a 333MHz PC running Windows 98. We start at the Sun, and pull back on an extraordinary trajectory that takes us past all the planets of the Solar System (all nine, at the time). As we pass by the Earth, Jupiter, and Pluto, we can actually see a moon near each planet. We travel through Saturn's ring plane, and through the atmosphere of Uranus. Some of the planet surfaces are mapped photomosaics, others (as in the case of Jupiter and Saturn), are computed patterns. The whole thing is hopelessly amateurish compared to the current state of the art, but this *was* 13 years ago, and I certainly was an amateur.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• CGI
• animation
• solar system
• mercury
• venus
• earth
• mars
• jupiter
• saturn
• uranus
• neptune
• pluto
• io
• luna
• charon
• asteroid belt
• science
• astronomy