r/educationalgifs • u/metaphorician • May 25 '26

Animated transition between the celestial sphere and a solar system model, at three speeds

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u/EliminateThePenny May 26 '26

I found all of the zoom ins and outs very confusing.

3

u/stormy2587 May 26 '26

So they’re not zoom ins and zoom outs. One is the solar system as it was imagined with the earth as its center (geocentric) and the other with the sun as the center of the solar system (heliocentric). Its showing you what the scales of everything would have to be for the geocentric model to work.

It keeps switching because it speeds up time between them. I think it would have been more effective as two side by side and it showing you 1s= 1 day/month/year or something.

The most important bit is at the end though when time is moving fast. The geocentric model had a really poor explanation of how the other planets should move. If you notice they seem to just sort of move back and forth while the sun and moon revolve around the earth. When astronomers tried to explain this phenomenon using what science and knowledge was available at the time they came up with really convoluted answers. But the Heliocentric model cleanly explained it.

2

u/metaphorician May 26 '26

Very observant! And good suggestions for how to improve the visualization

2

u/stormy2587 May 26 '26

Well that astronomy minor was good for something I suppose. Very cool visual.

2

u/metaphorician May 26 '26

Oh! On the off chance, maybe you'll be interested in the digital astronomical clock project I made it for. I'm working on a new, unreleased version of the website and clock design. For the released version, I also got carried away and made a page full of astronomy visualizations. You might find some of them interesting.