Instruments

All instruments

• The Moon right now

  Its face at the site clock’s time, on NASA’s own map of the surface, with its real tilt and the next full and new Moon.

• Saturn’s rings today

  The real tilt of the rings and their shadows, and the date they next turn edge-on and vanish.

• The planets in a telescope

  Seven discs at one scale, with their real sizes in the sky, phases and tilts.

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  Hear a pulsar spin

  Five dead stars ticking at their real spin rates, up to 716 turns a second. I slowed the diagram down so you can see why they pulse.

  The heart of the Crab Nebula, where one of them sits. This light left the nebula about 6,500 years before the picture was taken. The distance is the one given for the whole Crab Nebula. Image: NASA and ESA.

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  Black hole, hands on

  Drag a black hole across the stars, change its mass and see what falling in would do to you. The one at the centre of our galaxy is 25 million km across its event horizon.

  The black hole in the galaxy M87. The caption gives no distance, so no light-age. Image: EHT Collaboration, CC BY 4.0.

• Born 1 January 2000?You are Jupiter years old

  The sky when you were born

  Enter a date and save a card of that day’s sky: the planets, the Moon and your age in Jupiter years.

• Solar system map

  Zoom from Jupiter’s moons out to the Kuiper Belt, drag to wind time, and read how long light takes to reach each planet from Earth.

• EastWest

  Jupiter’s moons from Earth

  Where Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto sit beside the planet right now, as you would see them in binoculars.

• Up now from GreenwichDoing the sums

  Planets tonight

  Which planets are above your horizon and when, from wherever you are, with rise and set times.

• Total solar eclipse, 2 August 2027Up to 6 min 27 s of darkness

  The eclipse of 2 August 2027

  Where the Moon’s shadow falls, and how much of the Sun is covered from your place and when.

• Brightest in the sky over Greenwich nowDoing the sums

  The whole sky tonight

  A chart of everything overhead: bright stars, the Moon and the planets, for your place and hour.

• Sunlight reaching Earth right now left ago

  Ride a beam of light

  Send a flash from the Sun and wait, in real time, for it to reach each planet. Bring a book for Neptune.

• To Jupiter by car at 100 km/h, no stops

  Driving to Jupiter

  How long the trip to any planet would take on foot, by car, by airliner and as light. Pack sandwiches.

• If the Sun were a footballEarth is wide, away

  The solar system to scale

  Shrink the Sun to something you can hold and see how small and far apart the planets become.

• 70 kg on Earth reads185 kg on Jupiter12 kg on the Moon

  You, on other worlds

  What the scales would read on Jupiter, Io or Pluto, and how old you are in each planet’s years. On Jupiter I am a little over four.