For my first ever StarsightVR blog and I'd like to start with an apology. Myself, and many other astronomers I know, are guilty of the crime of using the word 'billion' too often in public talks. While I'm at it, I'd like to say sorry for using 'million' too often as well. If your brain is like mine, it gives up when dealing with big numbers and instead of giving you a nice mental picture of what you'd like to imagine it just sticks on a cerebral post-it note that says 'lots'.
To remedy this situation I'd like to introduce a new unit: the footstep. You don't need to know how many thousands of kilometres away the Moon is but I think you should have an easy way of gauging just how far away our satellite is. If you shrink the Earth down so that it is one footstep across then the Moon lies thirty footsteps away. Easy right? At this scale, the Moon is about the same size as your outstretched hand and only the Apollo astronauts have ever made it that far from home. All of the other astronauts have never travelled further away from the surface of the Earth than the width of your big toe. Thirty footsteps vs 'big toe'. These are the kind of numbers I can deal with.
When going stargazing with a group I like to try and get across this way of thinking about the Earth-Moon distance because it helps to get the nearby stuff in perspective before you start looking further afield. In the picture above I'm imitating (poorly) the classic Jim Lovell pose. He's an Apollo astronaut, one of the first three humans to ever go beyond the 'big toe', who remarked that he was able to cover up the entire Earth with his thumb when he was going around the Moon. The Earth, and everything on it, under your thumb. In StarsightVR we can let people try this for themselves. There's one drawback in that you can't see your thumb when wearing the VR headset but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try it! Putting you on the Moon to get some Earth-bound perspective is one of the things on my to-do list, watch this space...
Alastair
To remedy this situation I'd like to introduce a new unit: the footstep. You don't need to know how many thousands of kilometres away the Moon is but I think you should have an easy way of gauging just how far away our satellite is. If you shrink the Earth down so that it is one footstep across then the Moon lies thirty footsteps away. Easy right? At this scale, the Moon is about the same size as your outstretched hand and only the Apollo astronauts have ever made it that far from home. All of the other astronauts have never travelled further away from the surface of the Earth than the width of your big toe. Thirty footsteps vs 'big toe'. These are the kind of numbers I can deal with.
When going stargazing with a group I like to try and get across this way of thinking about the Earth-Moon distance because it helps to get the nearby stuff in perspective before you start looking further afield. In the picture above I'm imitating (poorly) the classic Jim Lovell pose. He's an Apollo astronaut, one of the first three humans to ever go beyond the 'big toe', who remarked that he was able to cover up the entire Earth with his thumb when he was going around the Moon. The Earth, and everything on it, under your thumb. In StarsightVR we can let people try this for themselves. There's one drawback in that you can't see your thumb when wearing the VR headset but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try it! Putting you on the Moon to get some Earth-bound perspective is one of the things on my to-do list, watch this space...
Alastair