Walk+To+The+Stars

=Walk To The Stars=

toc Read hear about an educational plan or curriculum on scale

=Overview=

NCSA researcher Stuart Levy is prime author and maintainer of Partiview, free, open-source software from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It is an industrial strength, interactive, mono- or stereoscopic viewer for 4-dimensional datasets. It is written in C++/OpenGL and has been compiled to run on Linux, Windows, OS X, and Irix.

Stuart Levy wrote "walk to the stars" as an implementation of partiview.

@http://dart.ncsa.uiuc.edu/partiview/starwalk/

=Description By Levy= Imagine shrinking the Universe until it's a short walk to the nearest stars. Then consider... How big is the solar system? -- If Alpha Centauri is 100 yards away, our entire solar system fits on a postage stamp. How far away are the bright stars? -- Some of them are vastly more luminous than others.

Of the three Summer Triangle stars, Altair and Vega are relatively nearby -- 16 and 26 light-years away -- and only a few dozen times brighter than the Sun. But Deneb is something like 100,000 brighter than the sun, and looks impressive for a couple thousand light-years in all directions. But it won't be so impressive for long -- such luminous stars are spendthrifts, and will burn through their hydrogen fuel in only a few million years -- thousands of times shorter than our Sun's lifetime.

At a scale of 23 yards per light−year (or 75 per parsec), then
 * From edge to edge of Pluto’s orbit: 1.03 inches
 * Average distance from Earth to Sun: 0.013 inches
 * Diameter of our star the Sun: 0.00012 inches

A list of proportions: (Thanks to Guy Ottewell’s "Astronomical Companion" for inspiration!)
 * The innermost ring extends 8 parsecs (600 yards) from the Sun, far enough to include Vega and Altair of the Summer Triangle. Each line is one parsec (75 yards).
 * The middle ring extends 30 parsecs (2250 yards, 1.25 miles), far enough to include the Big Dipper’s stars. Each line is 5 parsecs (375 yards).
 * The outermost ring extends 600 parsecs (25 miles), far enough to include the supergiant star Deneb, the third member of the Summer Triangle, more than 100,000 times as luminous as our Sun. Each line is 50 parsecs (3750 yards, 2.1 miles).

=Table of proportions=

Bearing is in degrees, measured counterclockwise. Bearing of 0 degrees is toward the center of our Milky Way. Bearing of 90 degrees is the direction the Milky Way rotates. Distance (in Milky Way plane) and Height in yards (yd) or miles (mi).


 * Bearing ||Distance ||||Height ||||Luminosity ||Star Name||
 * 0||0||yd||0||yd||1||Sun||
 * 316||100||yd||-1.6||yd||2.3||Alpha Centauri||
 * 214||260||yd||59||yd||10||Procyon||
 * 48||380||yd||-60||yd||16||Altair (Summer Triangle)||
 * 21||240||yd||-520||yd||25||Fomalhaut||
 * 227||200||yd||-31||yd||30||Sirius||
 * 133||950||yd||1600||yd||36||Megrez (Big Dipper cluster)||
 * 192||710||yd||310||yd||44||Pollux||
 * 67||550||yd||190||yd||69||Vega (S. Triangle)||
 * 141||920||yd||1700||yd||83||Phecda (Big Dipper)||
 * 113||850||yd||1600||yd||91||mizar (Big Dipper)||
 * 122||900||yd||1600||yd||140||Alioth (Big Dipper)||
 * 15||300||yd||790||yd||160||Arcturus||
 * 163||970||yd||77||yd||190||Capella||
 * 101||970||yd||2100||yd||210||Alkaid||
 * 143||1800||yd||2200||yd||330||Dubhe||
 * 197||3.1||mi||-1500||yd||1400||Bellatrix||
 * 123||5||mi||4400||yd||3300||Polaris||
 * 215||8.9||mi||-5300||yd||9100||Saiph (Orion’s foot)||
 * 204||11||mi||-6400||yd||12000||mintaka (Orion’s Belt)||
 * 200||5.5||mi||-1500||yd||13000||Betelgeuse (Orion’s Shoulder)||
 * 352||7.6||mi||3600||yd||16000||Antares||
 * 205||17||mi||-9100||yd||44000||Alnilam (Orion’s Belt)||
 * 209||9.1||mi||-7600||yd||58000||Rigel (blue supergiant, Orion’s foot)||
 * 84||25||mi||1600||yd||130000||Deneb (yellow supergiant, S. Triangle)||