Saturday, April 02, 2011

The center of the universe

The always interesting website Information Design Watch has numerous charts and graphs that illustrate this and that. Above is a cropped screen shot of a Flash application of an orrery that shows planets and moons in their orbits

If you follow the link you'll first see the Copernican model with the Sun at the center of the solar system. Click on 'Tyconian' in the lower right corner you can see how a solar system with Earth rather than the Sun at the center works. 

In that model, Mecury and Venus are moons of a rather tiny Sun, while the centers of orbits of the outer planets have to be offset from Earth to get the correct retrograde movement. Although wrong, it is quite clever none the less.   

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