Planets in Google Maps | Hacker News Reader

Planets in Google Maps

blog.google

195 pointssohkamyung40 comments

My 6 year old daughter loves this so much - maybe one day she'll get to visit one of them. I recently made a simple app to compare the sizes of planets, suns etc. when she asked how big the moon was compared to the sun. Might be interesting to folk here: http://callumprentice.github.io/apps/celestial_bodies/index....

Very simple, but really cool. Well done!

At first I though the orange splotchy one on the right was the Sun and was thinking there was no way Saturn was almost the same size as the Sun.

> how big the moon was compared to the sun

I like using a 1 Megameter per millimeter "planets view" (Earth is a blue marble; Jupiter is a striped ball; the Sun is an adult-sized white ball).[1] So you can google for lengths in km, trim 3 digits, and draw in millimeters.

Relatedly, building a scale model solar system, in a hallway, field or neighborhood, is a popular educational activity, with a lot of variants and instructions online.

[1] PDF: http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/RBigE?s=D72k . Broader context: the How to remember sizes section of http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Atoms (better than the page the PDF is on, FWIW). Two slides (for a 2 meter wide screen): http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/RBigE?s=K2so . Old misc (2001): http://www.vendian.org/howbig/?&page=Megapaper , http://www.vendian.org/howbig/?&page=Megafloor .

This is awesome. Doesn't seem to do turn-by-turn :) But on that note, does anyone know a good software to estimate trip times in the solar system? E.g. that can include things like optimal launch windows?

kerbal space program

> Doesn’t seem to do turn-by-turn

Everyone knows you just need to take the second right past Mars :)

It may be more heavy duty than you are looking for, but try NASA's GMAT tool

Super cool.

Actually, I would have expected some higher resolution for the earth facing side of the moon.

But did you notice? 3D works too :D

Very cool, now please put them in Google "Earth" (-like app) so that I can fly around on a tablet/smartphone.

It would also have been cool if the sun would be it's real (apparent) size, now it's the same for Mercurius and for Pluto but I always love that feeling images of Pluto give you, the loneliness, so far away from the sun.

Some kind of animation when flying between planets would also be nice. I like the effect of seeing a dark side when zooming out, this makes it nice to show how day and night work to my kids.

> It would also have been cool if the sun would be it's real (apparent) size, now it's the same for Mercurius and for Pluto but I always love that feeling images of Pluto give you, the loneliness, so far away from the sun.

You can't seem to see the Earth when rotating around the Moon either. Would be cool to have Jupiter and Saturn on the backdrop as well for their respective moons, they all give a sense of perspective. I know they would be out of scope/a collage of eternally changing clouds but I feel it's too bad there's none of the gas giants either, even if it's only as a sphere you could rotate around.

I agree! In the Expanse, the scenes on Ganymede with Jupiter in the back are absolutely breath taking, I could stare at those scenes for hours!

Now let's put it to good use with a clone of 'thetruesizeofx' and put those on the planet and moon maps! I want to know how Pluto compares to Texas.

yeah, but everyone already knows Alaska is bigger anyway :)

Can someone explain this strange strip on the Moon - https://www.google.com/maps/space/moon/@24.3318865,-6.805296...

Looks like strip of higher resolution images

That strip was taking at a different light situation than the background. It also has a higher resolution. There are many smaller strips and patches on the surface that look similarly out of place.

Google could blend them somehow but I guess much more imagery would be needed to have the average look good.

Also check out the overexaggerated shadowy mess at the poles. :)

"Also check out the overexaggerated shadowy mess at the poles." I hope that's a portal to the opposite pole :D

Same goes for lots of other places. A few years ago, even the earth map was full with these stripes when Google did not had good images from everywhere. Also check out Pluto, one half of the planet is just a smear.

They're still there in places like greenland and antarctica!

Those are stitched using pictures taken at a different illumination. [0]

[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-strip-running-along-the-ce...

This map widget seems to have better-integrated imagery:

https://moontrek.jpl.nasa.gov

Note that data from more than one source is combined to make these maps. And, some sites have been studied more closely than others due to lunar mission site selection studies.

This is a childhood dream. And a huge benefit for children right now: it was much harder to understand and dive into these topics in the past.

I found liquid water on Mars!

https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@7.0208449,-141.79946...

At least it looks like water

I wondered why Mars looks so unfamiliar but it's upside down! North down, west to the right.

Upside down in what referential ?

According to the standard "north up" convention.

I wanna see the flag on the moon.

Looks like it's located in the Sea of Tranquility near one of the Maskelyne craters. It's too low res to find the Station of Tranquility, though. If anybody has any luck, let us know!

Waiting for street view.

I wish I could search by name. Some articles on Mars mention specific areas by name and it would be nice to Google Map them

Very cool, hope they add New Horizons pics too (they may have already, it is not clear from the blog post).

They don't mention it but the photos of Pluto are from New Horizons. The post mostly talks about Cassini and Saturn's moons.

Interestingly, many territories have meaningful names, rather than a mixture of numbers and letters

They need to turn on anisotropic filtering, or at least bilinear/trilinear filtering.

Would be nice to be able to see the relative places in the solar system.

Shame you still can't zoom in on the poles

This is really awesome!

Is Ceres a planet now?

It is a dwarf planet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com