Solar System diagram “for fun” by Piotr Kaczmarek, creative director of http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com.
This animation represents the Solar System dynamics: you can see the movements of the planets and even the satellites of the planets. Keep in mind that the model is by no means a realistic one (many bloggers have announced it as “representing exact scales and sizes”). Obviously it is no more than a schematic model in terms of relative sizes and distances. However, the overall dynamics corresponds to the real one.
This is an interactive animation. You can set a particular date, see the phase of the Moon in real time or trace a particular planet. You can even see the information about the current zodiak sign, which has little to do with astronomy but anyway
.
A nice joke by the creators of the diagram: you can switch between the Copernican and Tychonian models of the world and check out the difference between the heleocentric and geocentric systems.
Enjoy!


