Sunday, January 12, 2014

Logarithmic Map of the Universe



 
A logarithmic map of the whole observable universe. Of course it can only show some of the objects known to exist. But this should give a All objects are assumed to be spherical (or more correctly circular). I've ignored the declination of all objects, only distance, size and direction (right ascension) are taken into account. So an object with a declination far from zero degrees still has a correct distance from the Earth.
 
The map was generated by a Python script and I use svgwrite to output it as a svg-file. The colouring is done in Inkscape.
 
Starting from the centre, we have the Earth. The Atmosphere is assumed to be 100 km thick (usually used as the boundary between space and the atmosphere). Here we can see the how powerful logarithms are, the centre of the Earth is about 6371 km below the surface and the other side is twice as far, but here they are quite close to each other.


Beyond the Earth we have the Moon and the Sun. The orbits of Mars, Venus and Neptune are also marked. The last one marking the border of the Solar System. The Moon and Sun are just little dots at this scale.

Some of the closes and brightest stars and the centre of the Milky Way galaxy are also shown. Outside our galaxy, the Local Void, and the closest galaxies are shown. Beyond that lie some of the galaxy clusters and large voids.

I guess it was inspired by this XKCD. I've also found this artists impression on Wikipedia. But these don't give a real logarithmic view.

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