Bad Astronomy

How high is space?

atmosphere_infographicI somehow missed this when it came out, but this picture is but one small part of an amazing 600 x 16500 pixel infographic showing the Earth’s atmosphere to scale! It has a lot of info, including heights of various phenomena like weather, meteors burning up, and aurorae.

It also shows how high various rockets and manned flights have gone, and interesting tidbits about the Earth’s thin shell of air. It’s an amazing and very cool piece of work.

I personally think these infographics are wonderful. They pack a lot of information into a pleasing and engaging format. I hope teachers across the country can print things like this out (though not sure how in this case!) to hang on their classroom walls. When I was a kid I would’ve sat and stared at this for hours.

Tip o’ the Kármán line to NASA_Goddard.