

Space Infographic - Keep scrolling & reach 13 billion miles from earth  - selvan
http://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/space_infographic.html

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luz42
I am a fan of visualisations of this kind, starting with Eames' powers of ten,
But this didn't impress me. The scale changes too arbitrarily to keep a
feeling for the actual distances growing, and the wave line made no sense to
me, just irritated. A better take on the subject (regarding overall
composition, individual images and music could be better):
<http://htwins.net/scale2/>

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jayfuerstenberg
This info graphic does however help people better understand the asteroid belt
ranges.

I knew Jupiter gets impacted by a lot of asteroids but had no idea it is
technically inside the asteroid belt.

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noirman
"1,660km: Farthest travelled by a dog"

I initially thought this one was a joke. Turns out it wasn't:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records#Lon...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records#Longest_canine_single_flight)

There're even stamps produced as a tribute to these space dogs:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Veterok_a...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Veterok_and_Ugolyok_USSR_stamp.png)

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japhyr
It gave me chills to scroll all the way down, and finally get to the Voyager 1
probe.

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eck
obligatory xkcd link: <http://xkcd.com/482/>

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damiankennedy
that was heaps more meaningful than the bbc one

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pserwylo
The most amazing thing for me was that Cassini (1.50bn kms) is 300 million
miles away from Saturn (1.20bn kms), but still it is orbiting Saturn.

Is this just the furthest point of its elliptical orbit? Or is it typical of
how we send spacecraft to orbit other planets? Or is it a typo?

I ask because according to the infographic, our communications satellites are
at a tiny 35,000 kms, whereas 300 million kms is twice the distance from Earth
to the Sun...

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T-hawk
That is wrong. Cassini's apogee (aposelene) is inside the orbit of Iapetus,
which is 3.5m km from Saturn. Cassini does not fly by Iapetus in its tours;
the orbit was adjusted to do so once but will not happen again.

The graphic is representing the distance of Saturn at its closest point to
Earth (as it does with Mars and Venus), but the distance of Cassini at its
farthest point from Earth. The latter is larger by the diameter of Earth's
orbit which is your 300m km difference.

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pserwylo
Thanks. I didn't think it added up :)

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julien_c
I was surprised that the whole page is only 3 MB. Nice PNG optimization.

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jchung
Why not flip this upside down and have the user start at the bottom of the
page and scroll up?

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mertd
I don't think there is a strong case for either direction, therefore they are
both fine.

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thematt
The planes and balloon are upside down relative to the earth and the man is
skydiving in the wrong direction.

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jlgreco
Would have been nicer, although admittedly much more impractical, if the scale
didn't keep on changing. Didn't quite fill me with as much awe as numbers
those large should have.

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fhars
You want this book: <http://mishka.lockandhenner.com/blog/?cat=45>

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jlgreco
That is possibly the coolest thing I have ever seen. Thanks!

