The relative sizes are super inaccurate. I know you know this, and I know in many ways it helps to have them be inaccurate so you can find anything in space, but the Earth and Moon look to be almost touching. In actuality, you can nearly fit every single planet in the solar system in a line between the Earth and Moon.
It's slightly more accurate when you click on the Earth, but the solar system view they look like they're nearly touching.
Also, small nit-pick, but I wouldn't use the term "dark side of the moon," and you also deepen this misconception by having it be literally dark and need to be lit up using a light bulb. The "far side of the moon" (better terminology) gets just as much light as the near side.
Absolutely! Not accurate at all! I had this debate a lot during the development: being realistic vs being user-friendly. I'd still choose being realistic because I don't want to build a game but to 'simulate' a real space.
When it comes to the distance between the Moon and the Earth, I think the problem there is more about the sizes of them rather than distance.
Agree with "far side". I'll change it, let's not mislead people:) Thanks for the comment. Very helpful!
Not in the browser but if you want the best "tries to be accurate" version of this concept I recommend Space Engine. Have yet to see anything else that comes close.
Space Engine (avail for free on its website, or on Steam to support devs) is amazing! Beautiful, amazing attention to detail, and realistic. Shows objects we know details about with those details (eg things in our solar system), and procedurally generates the rest.
Doesn't the dark side of the moon get more light than the near side, because when it's facing the sun Earth doesn't block .1% or whatever of the sunlight that it does for the near side?
As other folk have said, only during an eclipse. More specifically, light doesn't really diffuse like it does in atmosphere, because there aren't any particles to bounce off of. Technically space isn't a perfect vacuum, as there's stray particles all over the place. It's hardly enough to matter.
It seems like the near side of the moon could theoretically get more light on average. When light travels through the fringe of the Earth's atmosphere, it will diffuse and refract a bit. To some extent, some of that light will end up hitting the moon when it otherwise wouldn't have had the Earth not been there.
The relative sizes are super inaccurate. I know you know this, and I know in many ways it helps to have them be inaccurate so you can find anything in space, but the Earth and Moon look to be almost touching. In actuality, you can nearly fit every single planet in the solar system in a line between the Earth and Moon.
It's slightly more accurate when you click on the Earth, but the solar system view they look like they're nearly touching.
Also, small nit-pick, but I wouldn't use the term "dark side of the moon," and you also deepen this misconception by having it be literally dark and need to be lit up using a light bulb. The "far side of the moon" (better terminology) gets just as much light as the near side.