Parallax

I made this animated gif on the plane ride back from a conference last year. Someone had it in a talk I saw and I couldn't find a version of it online, so I had to make my own. I need to re-make it with proper resolution, as it looks grainy and ugly. Still, it nicely demonstrates how parallax works in astronomy. You know the stars that move left/right the most are close. The stationary red circles are my "very distant background quasars". In the bottom left corner you see a representation of the Earth (blue) going around the Sun (yellow).

UPDATE: it's 2018 now (holy smokes, almost 6 years later...) and I re-discovered this GIF on my computer. Bonus: sometime in 2014 I actually did re-render it with better resolution. Also the code is now public. Enjoy!