Tagged: sun

Planetary road sign in a museum-like setting showing the directions and distances to the sun, the moon and the seven planets

20. October 2018

Building a Planetary Road Sign

There must be many of them: those funny signposts that indicate the direction and the distance to places that are usually quite far away. Tokio 9597 kilometers, Kinshasa 6379 kilometers, Mahabalipuram 8106 kilometers. Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought a few weeks ago, if there was a signpost like that showing the directions and distances for the sun, the moon and the planets? Why doesn’t such a planetary road sign actually exist? Of course I immediately knew the answer. The planets all have their orbits around the sun and the moon revolves around one of those planets: the Earth. And… Read More

The names of all bodies in the Solar System larger than 100 kilometres, with font sizes relative to their radius, based on the realistic colors of the objects against the black background of space

Space art / Visualisation

8. November 2015

87 Members of the Solar Family

A while ago I made a family portrait of the solar system. Or rather a portrait of the leading members of the family, the eight planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercury. Moons, asteroids and dwarf planets But there’s more happening around the Sun. Moons for instance; our own Moon, of course, but also a large number of satellites of the four gas giants. There is an asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter where, besides a lot of little ones, also bigger objects are turning their rounds. But many asteroids can be found outside… Read More

Group portrait of the eight planets of our solar system, shown to scale: Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercury in their entirety and parts of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus

Space art / Visualisation

28. September 2015

Portrait of the Planets

When you want to capture the whole Solar System in one image, you come across a problem. The distances between the eight planets and their star are huge, almost unimaginable. In all the pictures of the solar system you’ve ever seen the sizes of the planets are wrong: they are strongly exaggerated, by necessity. On a scale model of about two metres – a nice size to hang on the wall in your living room – the Earth would be only four thousandths of a millimeter. You wouldn’t even be able to see our homeworld! Heaven on Earth The only… Read More

Impression of solar sail Johannes Kepler on its way to the moons of Jupiter against a background of stars with the Earth on the left and the moon in the distance

Space art / Visualisation

16. August 2015

Sailing on the Solar Wind

Probably not everyone realizes that there is also wind outside the Earth’s atmosphere. And that you can also sail in space. Sailing on a different kind of wind, that is: solar wind. The particles that make up sunlight exert force on the objects that are illuminated by them. Johannes Kepler was, in the 16th century, the first to realize the possibilities of a solar sail. He came to that insight while studying a comet. The tail of a comet is caused by the solar wind blowing its particles into space. Sustainable spaceflight The power of the solar wind is small… Read More

Photo of Korendijk Wetlands, the Netherlands, showing the sun rise above the banks of Haringvliet estuary

Photography

8. April 2015

Four Rewards for an Early Rise on Easter Morning

Getting up in the middle of the night is not something I like to do. And I suppose a large part of the population has similar feelings. But for a landscape photographer the sunrise often provides the best opportunities for making beautiful pictures. So sometimes it is wise to set aside principles and put the alarm at six o’clock. On Easter Sunday 2015, we were very royally rewarded for that bravery. The aim of the expedition were the Korendijk wetlands, a nature reserve on the island of Hoekse Waard, near Rotterdam. A large part of the area is only accessible… Read More

Photo taken low above the ground in a snowcovered Park in Rotterdam, illuminated by a low sun shining through the trees

Photography

30. December 2014

The Winter of ’14: Two Days of Snow, Ice and Slush

And so we had a White Christmas after all in Rotterdam. Well, almost, because the first snow flake fell shortly after midnight on the 27th of December. But it felt a bit like the third day of Christmas anyway. It was the beginning of a winter that would last for two days. Not too long, but already now there has been more snowfall than in all of last winter. And it was long enough to add a few nice photos to my collection Winter in Rotterdam. On that first day the temperature was just above freezing so there was a… Read More