Pluto System Animation (Pre-New Horizons)

I had trouble finding an interactive model of the Pluto system on the Web. There are either two many static illustrations that clutter up search results or not enough of the interactive kind, so I created my own, which is available on my website here:

Interactive Pluto system animation

I used the now archaic Flash to program to effect the animation. I respected the orbit distances and speed of revolution, but didn't attempt to scale the sizes of Pluto and it's moons.

Most important, I wanted a way to compare Pluto to our Earth-Moon system. Buttons will scale to the Earth-Moon system size and display our Moon. You can also tilt the orbits to get an aesthetically pleasing view.

Regrettably, the animation doesn't work on most mobile devices. I'll be working on version that does. The delay in producing the mobile device version will be advantageous in that I can build in any new discoveries made by the New Horizons space probe. Now, my animation may look like an old map of Europe before a world war. In one month, this may be the archaic pre-New Horizons map of the Pluto system.

jg

Update: A great visual summary by Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/pluto-fly-by-a-graphical-guide-to-the-historic-mission-1.17927