Riding Light (2015)
• January 1st, 2015 • 0h 45min
Animation, Documentary
Overview
In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective. Liberties were taken with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually "sees" or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall the size and distances of all the objects were kept as accurate as possible. It was also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter to keep the running length below an hour.
Make sure to check your pop-up blocker!!
Trailer
Similar Movies
The Conquest of Light
Released on: 1960-08-13
Documentary
The film discusses the evolution and potential of using light waves, particularly coherent light, fo...
Shadow Chasers
Released on: 2000-09-23
Documentary
This feature-length documentary is a portrait of eclipse chasers, people for whom solar eclipses - a...
Prehistoric Astronomers
Released on: 2007-01-01
Documentary
Cave paintings and lunar calendars exist in the caves and remains of prehistoric hunters studied rec...
The Once and Future Griffith Observatory
Released on: 2006-05-31
Documentary
Documentary about the Griffith Observatory, shown at their Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater
A Brief History of Time
Released on: 1991-10-01
Documentary
This shows physicist Stephen Hawking's life as he deals with the ALS that renders him immobile and u...
Cassini's Grand Finale
Released on: 2017-04-07
Documentary, Animation
To help visualize the dramatic final chapter in Cassini's remarkable story, NASA's Jet Propulsion La...
Miniverse
Released on: 2017-04-17
Documentary
What if you could get behind the wheel and race through space? We scale down the Solar System to the...
Cosmic Voyage
Released on: 1996-08-09
Documentary
The Academy Award® nominee Cosmic Voyage combines live action with state-of-the-art computer-generat...
The Mystery of Chaco Canyon
Released on: 1999-01-01
Documentary, History
Chaco Canyon, located in northwest New Mexico, is perhaps the only site in the world constructed in ...
Searching for Skylab, America's Forgotten Triumph
Released on: 2019-02-08
Documentary, History, Family
The first American space station Skylab is found in pieces scattered in Western Australia. Putting t...
Worlds of Ice
Released on: 2022-12-14
Documentary
From the territories of the Arctic to the farthest reaches of the universe, Worlds of Ice shows us t...
Living Worlds
Released on: 2021-11-01
Documentary
What forms might life take in the Solar System and beyond? In the Academy's newest original planetar...
New Horizons
Released on: 2015-06-30
Animation, Documentary
A brief visualisation of NASA’s historic spacecrafts Mariner, Pioneer, Voyager, and Dawn, exploring ...
Passage of Venus
Released on: 1874-12-09
Documentary
Photo sequence of the rare transit of Venus over the face of the Sun, one of the first chronophotogr...
From the Atoms to the Stars
Released on: 2017-09-29
Documentary, TV Movie
An incredible travel through space and time between the walls of the Paris Observatory, which is cel...
Hubble: Thirty Years of Discovery
Released on: 2020-04-19
Documentary
For thirty years, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered new alien worlds, black holes, and th...
Voyager: Never Ending Journey
Released on:
Documentary
The show tells a thrilling story of the most remarkable space mission in human history.
The Silent Pulse of the Universe
Released on: 2021-07-24
Documentary
Part of the Almost Famous series. Jocelyn Bell was a graduate student at Cambridge in 1967 when she ...
Secrets of the Solar System
Released on: 2015-03-03
Documentary
New planets are now being discovered outside our solar system on a regular basis, and these strange ...