Interactive Solar System Simulation

April 19, 2012 11:20 AM

Watch an Interactive Simulation of the Solar System (SLYT) It's like watching God at work, and he's a software developer.
posted by kmccorm (12 comments total)

Looks like a love child of Universe Sandbox and Stellarium - in other words: pretty neat.
posted by bigendian at 11:28 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I keep pressing A but it wont let me land on Mars.
posted by The Whelk at 11:30 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Cool!

In other simulation news...

First-Ever Model Simulation of the Structuring of the Observable Universe.
posted by symbioid at 11:37 AM on April 19, 2012

It's like watching God at work, and he's a software developer.

God uses Emacs to edit config files, not a GUI.
posted by benzenedream at 11:44 AM on April 19, 2012 [5 favorites]

Damn straight! And, Satan uses vi.
posted by symbioid at 11:46 AM on April 19, 2012

At what point does it do something Celestia hasn't been able to do for 10 years?
posted by DU at 11:52 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

At what point does it do something Celestia hasn't been able to do for 10 years?

I don't think Celestia can show gravitational fields, so that's something. Also, define "able to do," since Celestia can show the constellation illustrations but it requires an add-on.
posted by jedicus at 12:22 PM on April 19, 2012

Check out Eyes on the Solar System from NASA / JPL / Caltech. I only saw a brief demo at a conference, but it looked pretty neat. IIRC there are plans to move to a cross platform solution in the works, at the moment there's just Win/Mac support.
posted by zengargoyle at 12:32 PM on April 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

I love Celestia as much as the next guy but, graphically, this is leaps and bounds ahead of Celestia.
posted by Betelgeuse at 1:43 PM on April 19, 2012

Man. If this existed when I was a kid, they'd have had to pry the computer outta my hands to get me to go to school. By the time the video ended I was already jonesing for the aurora and dramatic impact upgrades.
posted by Twang at 3:31 PM on April 19, 2012

God is Tim Sweeny?
posted by sneebler at 6:14 PM on April 19, 2012

Watching the world's happiest four year old see the Earth having a light side and a dark side, and hearing him get excited as he actually GOT what causes day and night was pretty fantastic. He's been able to explain it for awhile, but I this changed it from factoid to knowledge.

So thank you. If nothing else you made one kid love science just a little more.
posted by Gygesringtone at 9:29 AM on April 20, 2012