Play with the planets

Tonight I did a fun interview on Off the Beaten Track show on Israel Sports Radio
The topic was the current planetary alignment and Shmuel from the show pointed me to this neat flash orrery

http://www.dynamicdiagrams.com/work/orrery/

Here is a screen shot showing the current alignment. The planets and orbits are not to scale in this program, but it is still cool to play with. See the interactive flash here









 If you want a more complete night sky simulator you can download Stellaruim free for your computer.

During the interview I was also asked about this really cool video of a comet hitting the sun a few days ago.

It turns out that these kind of comets are actually fairly common, but we don't always get such a good video!