Comments on: The skies reflect our spinning world

By: Erik

Erik — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:23:22 +0000

I really appreciate you for stuff like this, Phil. And you’re right – closer to completeness is exactly what I feel when I grasp some new fact about reality.

By: j t

j t — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:09:54 +0000

Here’s a fantastic edit of the Paranal Observatory timelapse video.

The sky stays stationary and the earth moves. We really are spinning!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1O66XsbrOA

The original video. It’s great, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpeM3fxJoQ

By: Keith Bowden

Keith Bowden — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:02:23 +0000

@Brian (3)
It’s funny, but the time lapse videos always look like what’s really happening, that the earth is spinning. It’s like a camera mounted on a rollercoaster – you know the ‘coaster isn’t sitting still with everything else whipping around. It just makes the reality that much more obvious when I look at these.

By: Srikar

Srikar — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 06:25:33 +0000

galactinate. Love the term

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:05:26 +0000

@5. Relativity :

I think he’s referring to this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44DlSj6bnn4

Via Monty Python.

Fantastic video and photos and great write up too. Thanks Brad Goldpaint and BA.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:25:49 +0000

As awesome as these rotating sky time lapse movies are at showing the results of a rotating earth, I’m curious why we never see a movie to show the effects of the tilt of the earths axis over a year?

Any movies out there with the same observer Az/El taking a picture once per night at the same time?

By: Relativity

Relativity — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:30:06 +0000

@BobG

You figured all that by yourself? Or Phil engalactinated your poetic prose? Thanks

By: POTU

POTU — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:30:57 +0000

Amazing images/video!

The simplest way to explain the circular paths of the stars is to imagine you are standing inside a large sphere that is slowly rotating on one axis. The stars that are on the ‘equator’ of the sphere will move in a straight line. The stars to the right and left will curve around their respective poles. If you look at one of the poles you will see circular trails, like this: http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs27/i/2008/036/2/e/Star_trails_by_kopfgeist79.jpg

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:51:30 +0000

It can be even more breathtaking to imagine the earth being perfectly still and the entire sky rotating around it. (No wonder the ancients believed the earth was at the center of the universe.)

By: Keith Bowden

Keith Bowden — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:34:42 +0000

Just one of the many reasons I come here daily. Thank you!

By: BobG999999

BobG999999 — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:03:15 +0000

It made me think of this …

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you’ve had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
That’s orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It’s a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it’s just three thousand light-years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go ’round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!