Animation Orientation

We (the audience) are located within the sun, heads hanging down, so that the six planets are apparently rotating around us clockwise. Each planet comes closest to us, and moves fastest, at its perihelion. The six planets, from the closest (and fastest) to the furthest (and slowest), are:
  • Mercury, 100
  • Venus, 135
  • Earth, 100
  • Mars, 35
  • Jupiter, 222
  • Saturn, 100
with numbers indicating the apparent aperture, or relative size of the planet's full shining disk.

We now imagine that the video projection screen is a window through which we see the disks of the planets during about one twelfth (that is one zodiacal sign) of their revolutions. Meanwhile, we will hear all the planets all the time, in front of us when they speed past the window, and behind us as they complete their cycles.

Besides the pitch variations and movements of the planets, as indicated in the surround sound tracks, we will see the planets moving at different speeds past the window. Taking as a base the performance time, two minutes, as the duration of one cycle of saturn (approximately 30 earth years), we would expect the visible passages of the planets past our window to be roughly:

  • Mercury, 8/100 second (120 times)
  • Venus, 1/5 second (48 times)
  • Earth, 1/3 second (30 times)
  • Mars, 2/3 second (16 times)
  • Jupiter, 4 seconds (2.5 times)
  • Saturn, 10 seconds (once)
Furthermore, we are going to assume for simplicity that each and every planet will achieve perihelion in the center of our window. Hence, we will call it the perihelion window.
Rev'd 13 dec 2002 by ralph abraham