This video shows the annual stellar parallax, for clarity, increased by 100 thousand times. Stellar parallax is the apparent shift of position of stars located closer to the Sun against the background of more distant stars that occurs during the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The smaller the distance between the Sun and a certain star, the stronger the apparent shift of this star.
You can clearly see how the outlines of the constellations would change during the year if the stars were 100 thousand times closer to the Sun. In order for the apparent brightness of the stars not to change, the stellar luminosity should be reduced by 10 billion times (100 thousand squared).
If the distance between the Sun and the stars decreases by 100 thousand times, then some of the nearest stars, such as Sirius, Procyon, Vega, Altair, α Centauri system will be within the inner Solar system. For example, Alpha Centauri in this case would be a little farther than Mars from the Sun, Sirius – a little farther than Jupiter, Vega – between Saturn and Uranus.
This video does not take into account the mutual gravitational influence that would arise in this case between the nearest stars and the Sun. The purpose of the video is to clearly show how small the stellar parallax is.
It is recommended to watch this video on a large screen (preferably in the dark) with a maximum resolution and a frequency of 60 frames per second in order to fully appreciate the effect of stellar parallax. The parallax increases by 100 thousand times from 01:30.
Watch the video with subtitles.
Modeling and rendering were performed by author of this publication using own software.
The track ‘Supernova-condition’ by Koi-discovery sounds in this video. This track was not changed. Link: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/koi-discovery/drakir/supernova-condition/
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
