3d Art and Animation by Stephen Dowdy
Scale of the Universe (2011)
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggling big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist..."*
This my second attempt to demonstrate the scale of the Universe. Each camera move reveals a view ten times larger than the previous image.
Starting fom a close up of a keyboard the camera pans up to show the desk, then the office, then the office block, then the city, the county, the country, the continent as we leave the atmosphere and soon the whole planet is in view. The Earth-Moon system swiftly disappears from view as we pass the Sun (100,000,000km or 0.6 astronomical units away), then Jupiter ( a little under 6 AU), then the Pluto-Charon system in the Kuiper Belt (60 AU) and then Sedna (600 AU) before passing though the disk-shaped Inner Oort Cloud (6,000AU) and then the spherical Outer Oort Cloud (1 light year) marking the edge of the Solar System.
At 10 light-years the local group of stars is visible and by 100 light-years we have passed through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a vast, tenuous expanse of gas though which the Sun is travelling. 1,000 LY reveals the Local Bubble and 10,000 LY the Orion-Cygnus spiral arm. At 100,000 LY our entire Milky Way galaxy is visible along with some of the its satellite galaxies. With the scale at 1,000,000 LY we can see our nearest galactic neighbours including Andromeda and a number of smaller and dwarf galaxies.
Beyond that is revealed at 10,000,000 LY our Local Group consisting of more than 30 galaxies gravitationally bound to the Milky Way-Andromeda system. 100,000,000 LY encompasses the Virgo Supercluster of which the Local Group is just one of at least a hundred similar groups. At 1,000,000,000 LY the Vigo Supercluster is just one thousands of superclusters and at 10,000,000,000 LY the great voids and filaments of galaxies that fill the Universe is apparent.
This animation was created mostly with a combination of Lightwave 3D and Abode AfterEffects. The images are used are taken from the NASA and ESA archives with some retouching in Paint Shop Pro. The human figures in the office are exported from DAZ Studio and then rigged and animated in Lightwave.
*'The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy' Douglas Adams
This my second attempt to demonstrate the scale of the Universe. Each camera move reveals a view ten times larger than the previous image.
Starting fom a close up of a keyboard the camera pans up to show the desk, then the office, then the office block, then the city, the county, the country, the continent as we leave the atmosphere and soon the whole planet is in view. The Earth-Moon system swiftly disappears from view as we pass the Sun (100,000,000km or 0.6 astronomical units away), then Jupiter ( a little under 6 AU), then the Pluto-Charon system in the Kuiper Belt (60 AU) and then Sedna (600 AU) before passing though the disk-shaped Inner Oort Cloud (6,000AU) and then the spherical Outer Oort Cloud (1 light year) marking the edge of the Solar System.
At 10 light-years the local group of stars is visible and by 100 light-years we have passed through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a vast, tenuous expanse of gas though which the Sun is travelling. 1,000 LY reveals the Local Bubble and 10,000 LY the Orion-Cygnus spiral arm. At 100,000 LY our entire Milky Way galaxy is visible along with some of the its satellite galaxies. With the scale at 1,000,000 LY we can see our nearest galactic neighbours including Andromeda and a number of smaller and dwarf galaxies.
Beyond that is revealed at 10,000,000 LY our Local Group consisting of more than 30 galaxies gravitationally bound to the Milky Way-Andromeda system. 100,000,000 LY encompasses the Virgo Supercluster of which the Local Group is just one of at least a hundred similar groups. At 1,000,000,000 LY the Vigo Supercluster is just one thousands of superclusters and at 10,000,000,000 LY the great voids and filaments of galaxies that fill the Universe is apparent.
This animation was created mostly with a combination of Lightwave 3D and Abode AfterEffects. The images are used are taken from the NASA and ESA archives with some retouching in Paint Shop Pro. The human figures in the office are exported from DAZ Studio and then rigged and animated in Lightwave.
*'The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy' Douglas Adams