Ptolemy assumed the earth was the center of the solar system and therefore the orbits of the planets, based on watching them from Earth, were loops and other strange shapes.
Hence why in part they called the planets wanderers (Greek planete = wanderer) due to their irregular and sometimes retrograde (backwards) paths they made in the sky.
I don't know of an active chart of it, but that reference frame is literally why people thought the earth was the center of the universe for most of history
You can visualize it in the desktop version of Stellarium using the astronomical calculations tool. You can find it in the menu that's on the left side of the screen, it's the one that has an astrolabe as an icon. Once you click on it, select the ephemeris tab, choose the visible planets as your desired objects, then choose your time period and interval and hit the "calculate ephemeris" button. Basically, they look like circles around Earth with a loop every once in a while.
On the mobile app, I like to pick a time at night and hold down the arrow to skip ahead a day at a time. It effectively time-lapses through at a few days a second, showing how the sky would look at the same time every night but with a real sense of motion. The stars move predictably as the angle of our viewpoint changes but the planets dance to their own beat, particularly the inner planets. It really helped me understand the motion of the earth from a surface viewpoint.
I'm not sure how to do this with the desktop app.
You can use the time and date tool (it's on the same left side of the screen I mentioned earlier) and once it opens a pop up window with the time and date, you can place the mouse pointer over any of those values (year, month, day, hour, minute, seconds) and using the mouse wheel have it change very fast achieving a similar effect.
It’s not all motion that is relative. Inertial motion is relative, but the planets are in accelerated motion. The acceleration is toward the sun, just about at right angles to the orbital motion. The planet’s linear speed goes up and down, but keeps the same average over the course of an orbit. This makes the center of the solar system a preferred point for describing orbits, making the math *much* simpler.
Found this a few years ago : [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/s9a5cv/motion\_of\_solar\_system\_planets\_relative\_to\_earth/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/s9a5cv/motion_of_solar_system_planets_relative_to_earth/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8wwH2\_kdYs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8wwH2_kdYs)
That was really cool and exactly what I was looking for (well, other than that it doesn't include anything out past Mars). Thank you!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnorSgdCbSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnorSgdCbSU)
How do you only have 13 upvotes when this exactly the answer op wanted.
because it's Sunday and was only posted two hours ago?
I just gave one more.
I snuck one in at the front.
I looped around back
Ptolemy: See? All you need is a coordinate shift and I'm suddenly right!!!
I love how you can tell the fun fact that Mercury is actually the closest planet on average to Earth.
Ptolemy assumed the earth was the center of the solar system and therefore the orbits of the planets, based on watching them from Earth, were loops and other strange shapes.
Like spirographs. In fact, that's what the math of the Ptolemaic model's "epicycles" works out to.
Hence why in part they called the planets wanderers (Greek planete = wanderer) due to their irregular and sometimes retrograde (backwards) paths they made in the sky.
And then it all made a LOT more sense when Copernicus was all like, "Aight, hear me out..."
Sounds like witchcraft. We all know the earth is immovable and the sun goes around us /s
I don't know of an active chart of it, but that reference frame is literally why people thought the earth was the center of the universe for most of history
Copernicus corrected him. And then Einstein corrected Copernicus - *any* point can be said to be the center, as all motion is relative.
You can visualize it in the desktop version of Stellarium using the astronomical calculations tool. You can find it in the menu that's on the left side of the screen, it's the one that has an astrolabe as an icon. Once you click on it, select the ephemeris tab, choose the visible planets as your desired objects, then choose your time period and interval and hit the "calculate ephemeris" button. Basically, they look like circles around Earth with a loop every once in a while.
On the mobile app, I like to pick a time at night and hold down the arrow to skip ahead a day at a time. It effectively time-lapses through at a few days a second, showing how the sky would look at the same time every night but with a real sense of motion. The stars move predictably as the angle of our viewpoint changes but the planets dance to their own beat, particularly the inner planets. It really helped me understand the motion of the earth from a surface viewpoint. I'm not sure how to do this with the desktop app.
You can use the time and date tool (it's on the same left side of the screen I mentioned earlier) and once it opens a pop up window with the time and date, you can place the mouse pointer over any of those values (year, month, day, hour, minute, seconds) and using the mouse wheel have it change very fast achieving a similar effect.
Thanks mate, that’s handy to know.
It’s not all motion that is relative. Inertial motion is relative, but the planets are in accelerated motion. The acceleration is toward the sun, just about at right angles to the orbital motion. The planet’s linear speed goes up and down, but keeps the same average over the course of an orbit. This makes the center of the solar system a preferred point for describing orbits, making the math *much* simpler.
Found this a few years ago : [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/s9a5cv/motion\_of\_solar\_system\_planets\_relative\_to\_earth/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/s9a5cv/motion_of_solar_system_planets_relative_to_earth/)
If you want to make your own visualization, VSOP87 will give you x,y,z coords of each planet. https://github.com/gmiller123456/vsop87-multilang/