As Douglas Adams once famously noted, space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. Graphic artist Josh Worth didn’t think you all were quite getting it, so he decided to shrink the solar system down to “tediously accurate scale” for you.
The scale, in this case, is 3,474.8 kilometers to 1 pixel, which is roughly the diameter of the Moon, and, for an added mindsplosion, is also the distance from New York to Las Vegas. Worth looked up the distance of each planet from the Sun and arranged them in order, so that when you scroll to the right, you’ll come across each of them. You know, eventually. It takes a lot of scrolling. For his part, Worth is sorry about that.
Sorry for all the scrolling on the 1px moon project. Can we convert scrolling to energy? Anybody working on that?
— Josh Worth (@misterjworth) March 6, 2014
He also fills the empty space (haha GET IT) with cute little comments about how large the solar system is, so it’s worth all the scrolling if you’ve got time.
If you’re not a big fan of holding your finger down on the right arrow key for what feels like a billion years, though, there’s also a handy toolbar at the top which lets you jump to the location of each planet.
Worth uses the astronomical sign for Uranus that isn’t featured in Sailor Moon, but I won’t hold that against him. Just kidding, I probably will. Either way, this is a really great project, and we only wish that we could print it out and use it as wallpaper in our new offices.
(via Josh Worth)
- Astronomers caught footage of a meteorite impact on the moon
- Check out NASA’s SXSW booth
- Yutu the Lunar Rover is alive!
