This is a time animated version of the real-sized planets file for Google Sky I mentioned yesterday. The Animation covers 60 days starting from 30 days previously. Position intervals are at 2 hours, and the file automatically updates once a day.

Animated Planets (Google Earth v4.2 Required)

First time it plays the file has to load in all the different Moon phase images causing stuttering. Subsequent views should run smoothly. I’ve added some optional tracks which are plotted in sync with each body’s transit. Everything else works same as before.  One slight annoyance is the way labels sometimes flip around the arrows, but without removing them entirely I don’t see how to prevent it.

Next, I’ll look at animations of different time durations, maybe piggy-backing on things like the Moon and Planet Layers in Google Sky.   The data is accurate over several thousand years,  so plenty of possibilities!