The Solar System: September, AD 15605

[töff]

Here's my beginning list of objects. This is enough to place them on rings and get a crop area.

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Name ___________________ Ecliptic Long. ____ Ecliptic Lat. _________ Distance
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####### Inner Planets =======================================================
Mercury ___________________ 87° 17.101' _____ -5° 56.598' _________ 0.4087 au
Venus ____________________ 226° 40.991' _____ +3° 21.200' _________ 0.7206 au
Earth _____________________ 11° 59.917' _____ -0° 0.000' __________ 1.0077 au
Mars ______________________ 64° 34.997' _____ -1° 23.898' _________ 1.4363 au
... 5261 Eureka @ L5 -60° __ 4°
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####### Asteroid Belt =======================================================
Eros _____________________ 255° 10.477' _____ -8° 58.058' _________ 1.6259 au
Victoria _________________ 319° 36.238' _____ +7° 50.342' _________ 1.8307 au
Bamberga _________________ 323° 49.258' _____ -1° 16.942' _________ 1.9429 au
Vesta ____________________ 243° 38.104' _____ +3° 58.678' _________ 2.1536 au
Melpomene ________________ 264° 3.456' ______ +8° 34.401' _________ 2.4063 au
Hebe _____________________ 277° 4.106' ______ +9° 13.018' _________ 2.4301 au
Euphrosyne ________________ 99° 19.502' ____ +25° 21.104' _________ 2.4432 au
Astraea __________________ 240° 53.914' _____ +4° 39.351' _________ 2.5770 au
Amphitrite _______________ 310° 19.233' _____ -4° 58.875' _________ 2.6054 au
Ceres ____________________ 241° 13.550' _____ +2° 53.412' _________ 2.7396 au
Iris _____________________ 186° 39.066' _____ -5° 22.619' _________ 2.7563 au
Thisbe ____________________ 55° 21.088' _____ +4° 4.367' __________ 2.7849 au
Fortuna __________________ 207° 52.568' _____ -0° 26.622' _________ 2.8276 au
Interamnia ________________ 90° 32.733' _____ +3° 49.404' _________ 2.8730 au
Hygiea ___________________ 305° 25.948' _____ +0° 49.819' _________ 2.9684 au
Europa ____________________ 31° 39.305' _____ -7° 2.023' __________ 3.0122 au
Eunomia __________________ 192° 15.806' ____ -11° 41.267' _________ 3.1021 au
Juno _____________________ 272° 7.982' _____ +11° 57.020' _________ 3.1716 au
Psyche ___________________ 160° 15.229' _____ +0° 46.609' _________ 3.2178 au
Pallas ___________________ 267° 19.605' ____ +34° 1.932' __________ 3.2183 au
Sylvia ____________________ 27° 28.047' _____ -7° 31.305' _________ 3.2850 au
Cybele ____________________ 47° 27.988' _____ -2° 49.349' _________ 3.7311 au
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####### Outer Planets =======================================================
Jupiter __________________ 227° 28.529' _____ +0° 36.113' _________ 5.1335 au
... L4 Greeks +60° ______ ~287°
... L5 Trojans -60° _____ ~167° ________
Saturn ___________________ 201° 22.883' _____ +0° 42.931' _________ 9.4172 au
Uranus ___________________ 123° 43.822' _____ -0° 10.735' ________ 20.0630 au
Neptune __________________ 346° 11.625' _____ +0° 48.935' ________ 30.3950 au
... L5 Trojans -60° _____ ~287°
Pluto ______________________ 9° 30.723' ____ +15° 35.366' ________ 31.1420 au
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####### Distant Objects =====================================================
Kuiper Belt _______________ na ______________ na ______________ 30-55.0000 au
Eris ______________________ 81° 26.515' _____+35° 19.172' ________ 57.9250 au
Heliopause ________________ na ______________ na _______________ ~100.0000 au
Sedna ____________________ 259° 39.918' ____ +10° 5.418' ________ 738.1600 au
Oort Cloud ________________ na ______________ na __________ to 50,000.0000 au
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=============================================================================
For further investigation:
Centaurs ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaur _ (planetoid)
TNO's ...... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Neptunian _ object
Hildas ..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda _ family
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[töff]

The first thing to do, though, is count the rings.

if I space the rings equally, the sun would be a point in the middle.

• 2 Sun -- I don't want to crowd the sun too much, so I will give it the first 2 rings.
• 1 Mercury
• 1 Venus
• 1 Earth
• 1 Mars
• 2 Asteroid Belt -- 2 rings for the belt, to leave plenty of room. I have kingdoms in the Belt.
• 2 Jupiter -- likewise 2 each for the gas giants, as they have trojans and/or major moon systems. Dunno what I will do with this room yet specifically.
• 2 Saturn
• 2 Uranus
• 2 Neptune
• 1 Pluto
• 1 Kuiper Belt
• 1 Eris
• 1/2 Heliopause -- there's nothing here, really, but I want to leave space for a demarcation. It's cool.
• 1 Sedna
• 2 Oort Cloud -- 2 rings, for space to put stuff in.

=======
22.5 rings total. My celestial spheres!

Now to drop my planets in place, based on their ecliptic longitudes in September AD 15,605.

[töff]

The ring assignments ....

[töff]

Crapweasels ... I flubbed Neptune's double allotment.

Well, it gives me a chance to redo the spheres as equally spaced. I'm not sure I like the way the inner planets get cramped in that first version -- it's reminiscent of real life, which I was hoping to posterize into nothing. I kinda like the "everybody even" concept, totally equitable abstraction of scale. But on the other hand, I also like the variation in the unequal ring spacings. I like things to be unequal sometimes, not overly ordered and regimented. Hmm! Grr. Time to make up my min-n-nd. Poor Charlie, tough decision!

I'm leaning toward the unequals (repaired below, on the left). I think the medieval "all spheres are equal" is not gonna survive. Oh well! Cake and eat it, right?

Isn't it funny how you hit all these particular stages in a project, when things get decided, and they really can't be changed afterwards. Too bad! I really strive for "tweak it later" flexibility, but it just can't be had sometimes.

[töff]

This is so not a tutorial.

[töff]

In a half-hearted attempt to rescue this throg (thread/blog) from complete deviation from any sort of tutorial value at all, I thought to do a screen shot or two and describe how I am accomplishing some things. So ...

My next task was to place my planets around the rings at their ecliptic longitudes. I distilled the numbers I needed from the previous list, rounding to the nearest degree. Then I put a white dot on each orbit ring. (This means ecliptic longitude zero is straight down. I'll rotate the whole system later anyway.)

I've found that one easy way (there's many) to rotate an object around the edge of a circle (an orbit) is to create another set of dots mirrored on the other side of the origin (the Sun's postition). I filled the mirrors with a different color; you'll see why in a moment.

Then just group each planet with its mirror, and when you choose the ROTATE tool, it automatically sets the pivot point at the sun, which is the common center of the planet & its mirror.

So, just punch the desired rotation into the Transform panel, and woohoo, here's Mercury and Venus already rotated, and Earth just done too, still selected and its rotation shown in the panel.

After they're all rotated, I'll just select all the gray mirrors and delete them (or better yet, defill & destroke them to retain rotatability). If they weren't a different color, it'd be a nightmare to pick the mirrors out from the real planets, because you'd just see a whole lotta white dots rotated all over the system ... try it; you'll see.

This is in Adobe Illustrator CS3, btw.

[töff]

Now I've got them all placed.

If I keep a minimum amount of space around each planet (the ugly green circles), I can crop off a lot of the system on the top. Sedna threw a monkey into the wrench, and prevents me from cropping anything off the left. Oh well.

Dare I check how the positions compare to the previous screenshots from that other astro calculator?

[ravells]

Keep going, I'm finding this a fascinating read! I can't comment because I've got nothing constructive to contribute, but I'm enjoying the education!

[RobA]

Just brainstorming, another way to represent the planets symbolically and still hint at the scale is to offset the orbits:



BTW, toff, this thread is an interesting read!

-Rob A>

[töff]

hint at the scale is to offset the orbits

That's a very cool idea, but I don't think I can use it this time because I have "full-orbit" elements such as the Asteroid Belt, which will be shown in its entirety, and it'd look, um, shall we say, "too jaunty" if it weren't centered on the Sun. But still, I like your idea a lot and I might swipe it for some other project some time. Cheers! That's clever.