…if they were the same distance from earth as the moon?
Jupiter is pretty scary. Of course, in the case of the gas giants, to first order, we’d be orbiting them, not them orbiting us.
18 thoughts on “How Would Other Planets Look?”
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Being a nit picking nerd… two bodies will always orbit each other.
Well, until they touch.
Jupiter would still look pretty scary.
If Jupiter was that close, then Al Gore would really see the oceans rise (and fall).
If the Earth were to orbit Jupiter at the same distance the Moon orbits the Earth, it would approximate Io’s orbit, likely producing the same volcanic results due to the Jovian tidal forces.
How large would a satellite have to be relative to its primary to induce tidal locking between the two by the time the system was the Earth’s current age? I suspect the Earth/Earth combo would be locked, but what about the Earth/Mars?
Having a Martian-sized satellite would be cool. The Space Race would’ve gone into high-gear with a terraformable target that close.
The sound would be amazing too. 😉
The video exaggerates a bit. It shows Jupiter filling the sky horizon to horizon. Jupiter’s radius is about 40 times that of the moon, which subtends half a degree in Earth’s sky. So Jupiter would subtend about 20 degrees from the same distance, about the width of two fists held at arm’s length. My copy of Celestia confirms this. Would still be pretty spectacular (until Jupiter’s radiation belts fry you, of course…).
So people growing up on IO would be pretty darn difficult to intimidate, eh?
Mars is about an order of magnitude more massive than the Moon, so yes, we’d be locked by now. My guess for minimum: 2 to 3 lunar masses.
I guess they didn’t show Uranus so it would be safe for work…
Heh, he said, “Uranus.”
And I hadn’t even read the previous post…
They have Earth, Mars and Jupiter revolving the wrong direction! (I hate when that happens). These planets all rotate west-to-east, or counter clockwise as viewed from above the N pole. (Neptune rotates west-to-east as well, but I couldn’t make out any rotation of Neptune in the video).
Bill are you taking into account the trauma that would have it put into the moons orbit. That’s gotta tilt those balls ya know… (waiting for Titus 3. 2. 1…)
The video exaggerates a bit. It shows Jupiter filling the sky horizon to horizon. Jupiter’s radius is about 40 times that of the moon, which subtends half a degree in Earth’s sky. So Jupiter would subtend about 20 degrees from the same distance, about the width of two fists held at arm’s length.
The distance of two fists held at arm’s length doesn’t look like 20 degrees to me. If you use 30 inches as your arm’s lenght, the tan(20) * 30 inches gives a distance of just under 11 inches compared to a quarter inch for the moon.
Nemo, it’s a magnified view. The Moon looks nothing like that big in a photograph; even a 600mm lens doesn’t make it look that size.
Heh, he said, “tilt.”