I think it’s shit-eating-grin cool that despite all my years of (admittedly, sporadic) fascination with the solar system, the matter-of-fact way the solar system is depicted here traveling through space, generating a bow wave dropped my jaw to the floor.
How great is that! And how intuitively correct, as well! I’d just never thought of it that way, but of course it all makes sense.
Here’s are three photographic examples of interstellar bow wave:
Zeta Ophiuchi, Runaway Star.
Neutron Star Shockwave.
LL Orionis — actually looks like a bow!
We are destined to be the Space-Dolphins who ride the bow-wave – we just need some gene splicing…
I’ll admit, I had never really thought about the bow shock either until some years ago when they first started talking about the probes reaching the heliopause. But yeah, it makes sense, our star is hurtling through space, and space is hardly a void, so stuff is getting pushed around.
OK, set the Sun to all ahead full.
I want to go water skiing.
568,000 mph (with regard to galactic center) doesn’t do it for you eh?