> It's a browser view of the Solar System at real scale
Is it really? I don't think you could see the satellites, if they weren't drawn at 1000x scale. I am wrong?
At real scale, i would expect to not see anything.
> It's a browser view of the Solar System at real scale
Is it really? I don't think you could see the satellites, if they weren't drawn at 1000x scale. I am wrong?
At real scale, i would expect to not see anything.
Those are just UX elements -- indeed, no satellite other than maaaaaybe the ISS could be seen here. For one thing, anything in LEO would seem to be moving so darn fast that it'd be disorienting.
I imagine there's various similar problems -- Saturn's rings not having the exact right pattern, asteroids not matching their real shape, all the planets being perfect spheres, etc. But I think this resoundingly meets the bar for "a view of the Solar System". Maps and territories and all that, y'know? A quick sketch in a textbook can also be a "a view" while containing far less detail.
> For one thing, anything in LEO would seem to be moving so darn fast that it'd be disorienting.
They take ~90 minutes to orbit - it's not that quick. The satellites are actually moving at the right speed.
Sorry, to clarify: if you zoomed in close enough to see the actual objects without digital labels, then they’d be going very fast
I think it's pretty obvious the satellites aren't drawn to scale, given they don't change in size when zooming in/out.
But this is a fundamental problem with using it as a 'space is crowded' argument.
I assumed they meant that relative distance from Earth or orbit is to scale, not that the size of the dots was to scale, but I could be wrong
Good point, the page now says it: distances are to scale, the dots are not.