This page gives some details of the animation and suggests some interesting things to look at in the solar system here.
Simulation detail
- All objects appear much larger than in reality! Planets are 500x their actual size while the sun is 10x its sun. Without this magnification, you would struggle to see a few pixels moving around your screen.
Suggested observations
- On the 6th June 2012 and the 8th June 2004 you can see the two most recent transits of Venus. The previous pair of transits can be seen on the 9th and 6th of December 1874 and 1882. These two pairs show that transits can happen at two points on the earth’s orbit: where Venus passes upward through the Earth’s orbital plan (as in the December transits) and when Venus passes downward (as in the June transits). The fact that orbits come in pairs 8 years apart is caused by the (almost) 13:8 resonance between the earth and Venus - after 8 Earth orbits and 13 Venus orbits the planets are back in the same relative position. As this resonanace is only almost 13:8 and not exactly, the next time this comes around the positions have shifted enough that no transit occurs. This slow shift, over just more than a century, results in a transit on the other side of the orbit!
- The Great Conjunction (the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn) of December 21st 2020. Coincidentally on the solstice, Jupiter and Saturn appeared as close as they have been in centuries.