Riding Light

In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it s unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system. I ve taken liberties with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, but overall I ve kept the size and distances of all the objects as accurate as possible. I also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter as I wanted to keep the running length below an hour. Music: Steve Reich Music for 18 Musicians Performed by: Eighth Blackbird