APOD: Virtual Flyby of the Whirlpool Galaxy (2019 May 06)

Comments and questions about the APOD on the main view screen.
TheZuke!
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Re: APOD: Virtual Flyby of the Whirlpool Galaxy (2019 May 06)

Post by TheZuke! » Tue May 07, 2019 4:05 pm

mfavret wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 5:24 am I'm french and I hope you will excuse my poor English.
[...] Second, the flyby takes about one minute and the galaxy is thousand light-years large, so our virtual speed is millions time the light speed ! [...]
Godspeed!

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Re: APOD: Virtual Flyby of the Whirlpool Galaxy (2019 May 06)

Post by jwgeddis@gmail.com » Tue May 07, 2019 8:47 pm

a bit disappointing compared to other NASA animated flyby's. The was a simple 2 layer animation with the background stars separated and at a constant distance and with the foreground galaxy zoomed at a constant rate. It would have been an assignment for a first semester animation student. Choice of dramatic music way exceeded any drama of the video....

yetagain

Re: APOD: Virtual Flyby of the Whirlpool Galaxy (2019 May 06)

Post by yetagain » Wed May 08, 2019 11:44 am

Cheesy Star Trek music

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geckzilla
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Re: APOD: Virtual Flyby of the Whirlpool Galaxy (2019 May 06)

Post by geckzilla » Sat May 11, 2019 4:29 pm

jwgeddis@gmail.com wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 8:47 pm a bit disappointing compared to other NASA animated flyby's. The was a simple 2 layer animation with the background stars separated and at a constant distance and with the foreground galaxy zoomed at a constant rate. It would have been an assignment for a first semester animation student. Choice of dramatic music way exceeded any drama of the video....
no... it's not? That's a fully 3D galaxy using real data acquired by Hubble and you can see the parallax for a lot of the individual stars. This sort of visualization is one of the hardest to achieve because the goal is for it to be as close to reality as possible. It does look weird though because it is essentially a 2d image projected into a 3d shape. There's always room for improvement, but the constraint of avoiding simply making up data is what makes it so challenging.
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Re: APOD: Virtual Flyby of the Whirlpool Galaxy (2019 May 06)

Post by neufer » Sat May 11, 2019 5:26 pm

geckzilla wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 4:29 pm
That's a fully 3D galaxy using real data acquired by Hubble and you can see the parallax for a lot of the individual stars. This sort of visualization is one of the hardest to achieve because the goal is for it to be as close to reality as possible. It does look weird though because it is essentially a 2d image projected into a 3d shape. There's always room for improvement, but the constraint of avoiding simply making up data is what makes it so challenging.
Presumably the z-distance of individual stars out of the galactic plane is basically the result of a random number generator.

But the galactic plane itself must be considerably distorted by the interaction with NGC 5194.

I wonder if they ignored both NGC 5194 AND its distorting interactions?
Art Neuendorffer

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geckzilla
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Re: APOD: Virtual Flyby of the Whirlpool Galaxy (2019 May 06)

Post by geckzilla » Sat May 11, 2019 9:36 pm

All I know is they tend to utilize what data they have, and if they don't have it, they usually don't make things up. The z-distance for the stars was an acceptable compromise, I guess. Either way, I just want to emphasize that it's not easy and not a project for someone totally new to animation and modeling.
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