click to view the MPEG movie (cliquez pour voir le film MPEG)

From 'geocentrism' to 'heliocentrism' [Du géocentrisme à l'héliocentrisme].




The trajectories of Mars (red) and of the Sun (yellow) are displayed as viewed from a Earth-like planet (blue). During this animation, the Earth is moved from Mars -bottom left- to the Sun -top right- (see figure "The journey of an Earth-like planet (blue) from Mars (red) to the Sun (yellow)"). For each intermediate Earth trajectory, the 3-body system is visualized with the Earth at the origin of coordinates. Each of the displayed trajectories has a duration equals to one martian year.

Then, can you guess what happens if the plane of the Earth is perpendicular to the one of Mars?


Please, note that due to scale problems, it is almost impossible to visualize simultaneously actual distances and sizes in the Solar System. Then, it is the square root of the distances to the Sun that are displayed; when the Solar System is displayed without such a non linear scaling, the inner planets are "hidden" by the Sun. Moreover, the diameter of each celestial body is multiplied by a huge arbitrary factor.


(CMAP28 WWW site: this page was created on 01/17/1996 and last updated on 12/09/2024 12:44:22 -CET-)



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