A NASA scientist’s recent technological production comes in the form of a rather otherworldly simulation; one that lets us experience a sunset on another planet.
Whilst building a computer modelling tool for a possible future mission to Uranus, the planet scientist simultaneously designed these sunset simulations for our viewing.
Fancy a sunset on Uranus? Now you can do just that with the release of a new video of planet simulations from a NASA scientist.
The simulation animations place you as though you’re looking up at the sky from Earth, Venus, Mars, Uranus, and Titan – with the white dot representing, yep you guessed it, the sun. The result is that you get to view the sun setting as though you were standing on any one of these worlds.
The simulation tool was created by NASA scientist Geronimo Villanueva and his team who managed to capture the process of sunlight reaching the atmosphere of hydrogen, helium, and methane so to absorb the red portion of the light. Basically this is the fancy scientific stuff that goes on when sunset happens.
And this has more than an aesthetic effect. The simulation helps scientists translate the measurements of light that reveal its chemical makeup, ultimately better preparing us for a future mission to planets outside of our world. That doesn’t sound too bad at the moment with the pandemic wreaking havoc on life here on Earth.
