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July 18, 2007
The Solar System in Google Earth
The 34 moon collection put out a couple days ago at the Barnabu blog has now been taken to the next natural evolution. James has changed the Earth into the Sun (by adding an image overlay) and then scaled the Moons down relative to the size of the Sun and added all the planets as 3D models as well. So now you have a true-to-scale comparison of the main bodies of the solar system. The new Google Earth Solar System 
(7 Mbytes) collection is quite cool looking. NOTE: Turn off the "View->Atmosphere" so the sun doesn't have a blue halo around it. It's very hard to see all the detail on each 3D model with the standard Google Earth interface though. You could use the G-Force mode of Google Earth to fly over the planets. But, the best way is to use the SpaceNavigator 3D mouse. Check out this video fly-by I created - it starts with the smallest moon above 100 km in size:
Here's the link to the story at the Barnabu blog. Great work again James!
Posted by FrankTaylor at July 18, 2007 1:16 PM
Comments
Posted by: tatu at July 19, 2007 1:06 PM
Congratulations its a great work and its so important for education and research for beginnerss like me thanks a lot
Posted by: Jorge Mortera at August 2, 2007 2:10 PM
Could it all possibly be a mindless accident?!! Or, was it designed....by an amazing Designer??!
Posted by: Ralph Gaily at August 2, 2007 3:30 PM
wow! it's so amazing i hope someday like google earth we can see the other planets or the milk way i hope someday guys you create that could be amazing
Posted by: marvin at August 2, 2007 5:11 PM
Simply amazing! It makes me sad however that my good friend Fred, aka Fred Asparagus did not live long enough to witness this magnificence.
Posted by: Russ Tucker at September 23, 2007 12:21 AM
"Could it all possibly be a mindless accident?!! Or, was it designed....by an amazing Designer??!"
Those who claim that this "amazing designer" is responsible, were the same who claimed that the earth was the center of the universe and that everything revolved around it, they are putting faith in front of science, letting faith invade the field of science, and are thus standing in the way of true understanding of the world.
Posted by: Julle at October 14, 2007 1:38 PM
"Those who claim that this "amazing designer" is responsible, were the same who claimed that the earth was the center of the universe and that everything revolved around it, they are putting faith in front of science, letting faith invade the field of science, and are thus standing in the way of true understanding of the world."
I think we've gone quite a few generations beyond believing that an earth-centric system. Whether you believe in a created universe or not, mankind has had the propensity to mistake things. We live, we learn. Faith is just an expression that indicates belief in something that is not proven. Give us undeniable proof and faith is no longer necessary. Science (truth) will always supplant faith when possible, but the question of origin of life can not be answered by current science - so faith remains.
Posted by: Nate at April 11, 2009 2:46 PM
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It's so amazing! I was surprised that the earth was so smaller than the sun.