Photography is all about light. As such it’s mind boggling to think about how far light has travelled before it bounces off whatever you’re shooting and finally hits your camera’s sensor or film! In this 45 minute long animation you get a sense of that epic distance as you follow the realtime journey of a photon of light emitted from the sun as it travels across a section of the solar system!
The creator of the animation describes it as follows:
“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.”
Animation by Alphonse Swinehart