Of course, in medieval times, it was heretical to suggest at all that the Earth wasn't at the centre of things. Ever since we've inched towards the Copernican, and then heliocentric, model of things, humanity has accepted one blow after another to its lofty view of itself - just like Darwinian evolutionary theory. We have slowly but surely accepted more and more that we're not really at the centre of the Universe, but rather, somewhat humiliatingly, just on top of a rather small, insignificant rocky planet orbiting around one of amongst millions of stars in a suburb of just one galaxy - the Milky Way. Though not that insignificant - the Earth is unique in harbouring advanced life, something amazing given the odds of survival.

In the animation below, I have tried to represent the fragile nature of the Earth somewhat, with the Earth's size contrasted with that of the gas giants and the Sun. This has chimed with the recent focus into the effects of climate change. Ever since NASA has been able to photograph the Earth from space, the image of a tiny blue planet in a vast Universe has been taken up by environmental organisations, and was a central motif of the progressive countercultural movements from the 60s onwards, including in the Whole Earth Catalog. The basic template for starting the animation was taken from this YouTube clip, but from there I tailored it accordingly, and modified it extensively, to take in the whole solar system. To that I added the background image of stars winking, for which I varied the 'twinkling effect' and size for each one, in order to have some variation. All the planets are animated GIFs, except for Saturn, for which the best photos were undeniably static; the moons are mostly static images, with the exception of our own Moon, which is an animated GIF. I have varied the orbital speeds of each planet and moon to try and accurately reflect their orbital speed in reality. Needless to say, all photos are NASA Creative Commons.

Of course, the depiction of planets, moons, and our Sun are not accurate representations of size - that would be impossible. Jupiter is approximately 318 times as massive as the Earth. Meanwhile, one thousand Jupiter's could fit inside the Sun. Nonetheless, I've tried to keep very roughly to contrasts in sizes, with Jupiter represented as the largest planet and Mercury the smallest. A more accurate representation of the differences in size of the bodies in the solar system can be viewed here.

It would also be impossible to depict all the moons that exist in the solar system, with each of the gas giants containing a huge number. Jupiter on its own contains seventy-nine of them. As a result, in Jupiter's case, I have only included the four largest, the prominent so-called 'Galilean moons': Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, all of which have been the subject of much interest in recent years because of the possibility of them harbouring primitive life, including the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE). Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, is on its own bigger in size than the planet Mercury, and much more than our own Moon. Meanwhile, Saturn has sixty-two moons; Uranus twenty-seven; and Neptune fourteen. As a result, I have chosen only to include the largest moon for each of those three planets: Titan, Titania, and Triton respectively, with Titan also bigger than our own Moon. Again, I have tried to represent the moons roughly as they appear in size.

When working on the below animation, it quickly became obvious that apart from size, a big issue would be accurately representing the orbit of the planets in at least something approaching 3-D. When attempting to depict the orbit of the planets as an oval shape, rather than a circle, the highlighted orbit path would itself rotate along with the planet, which looked completely wrong. As a result, I have settled with the planets rotating in a 2-D circle. A more accurate 3-D representation, using an oval rather than circular rotation, is beyond my talents at present, but can be viewed as rendered by others here. In addition, the planets and moons themselves are more spheres than perfect circles.

Another problem that came up is that the planets and moons are depicted rotating upside down, rather than spinning on their axis, as is the reality. The planets and moons spin around, but do not rotate upside down 360 degrees. If they did, the Earth's Arctic and Antarctic regions would be at various times the closest parts of the planet to the Sun, which obviously isn't the case (hence why they are snowy tundra!). Instead, the Earth's equatorial regions are the parts of the planet that are constantly the closest to the Sun (hence why they are hot regions). It was not possible to change this so that the planets are not depicted rotating upside down.

Please also note that Pluto is not included as it is no longer considered a planet (something that has changed from my childhood). Instead, it is now officially considered a 'Plutoid', or 'dwarf planet', along with other small rocky bodies out in the Kuiper belt. I have not included these, or the asteroid belt that exists between Mars and Jupiter, for now, but may come back to including them. Pluto's demotion was covered in the news, leading to passionate protests. These things matter, after all.