Dr James O’Donoghue’s Space Animations

Visualisations are great at explaining concepts it can be hard to understand from text alone. Some of the best space visualisations I’ve seen recently are those by Dr James O’Donoghue. I’ve embedded just a few of my favourites below:

Planet Rotations

View how fast the different planets rotate relative to each other (how long their days are):

Speed of Light

See how long it takes for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth in real time:

Tides

See how the Sun and Moon cause tides in the Earth’s oceans:

Planet Orbits

See how fast the planets orbit the Sun relative to each other (I made my own visualisation of the planet’s orbits years ago):

The Moon

See how the Moon appears from different places on the Earth:

If you like these animations then you can find more by checking out his Twitter and YouTube accounts.