What Do Planets Look Like from Earth?


As we pass some 380,000 kilometers from the Moon, Earth looks like a glowing ball in space. Composite image showing Earth from the perspective of a spacecraft orbiting Earth’s moon in October 2015. Read on and check out the photos on this page to see what the Earth looks like elsewhere in our space.

Planets look like stars when viewed from Earth. Planets are smaller than tars, but they are closer, so they appear to have a size similar to that of a star. At the same time, they reflect light from the sun in the way the moon doe. So they look like stars and move about in the night sky.

Space artist Ron Miller has created a series of images that show the size of other planets in our solar system in a way that makes them more accessible, showing what they might look like from 240,000 miles away – about 240,000 miles away Is the moon from the earth to the other planets. Our solar system is 240,000 miles from the moon.

We Can Simulate the Appearance of Planets

NASA planetary scientist shows what would happen if the world, Mars, Venus, Uranus and Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, move away from sunlight, and the brightness of the Sun disappears into the distance. While the math is accurate, this video animation doesn’t show what might actually happen if Mars were that close to Earth.

The video above shows various sunsets side by side, with a white dot representing the Sun’s position as the Sun sets on Mars. If you look closely at the enlarged version, you will see the Moon as an even dimmer dot to the right of the Earth.

When the planet is closer to the horizon, you are looking through more air and therefore the planet will appear dimmer than when it was higher in the sky. Depending on the planet’s distance from Earth, it may appear brighter or dimmer in the sky than before. Based on its effect on the spectrum of stars, the team calculated that the planet is probably smaller than the Sun, but at least 26% of the mass of our planets.

Numerous Cosmic Bodies Have Unique Appearances

Its parent star is about 80% brighter than Earth, so Kepler-69c appears to be in the habitable zone. It was the first planet Kepler discovered in the habitable zone of its parent star, but the world is significantly larger than Earth, about 2.4 times the size of our planets. Venus is Earth’s closest neighbor in our solar system and the closest planet to Earth in terms of size, gravity, and composition.

Away from Earth, Saturn’s unique ring system makes Saturn perhaps the most recognizable planet in our solar system. It is one of the five planets visible from Earth to the naked eye (the others being Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter). Although Mars is not our closest neighbor (Venus is honored) or the brightest planet in the night sky (not even Venus), it may be the planet that most inspires our imagination.

Of this list, Mercury is perhaps the hardest to spot. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and can never be seen too far from the Sun, so its low altitude and the glow of the rising or setting sun can make it difficult. select. The five brightest planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn Mars Saturn – have been known since ancient times and are easy to see with the naked eye if you know when and where to look.

The brightness values ​​given by Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are the brightest and dimmest magnitudes the planet can achieve in its orbit (the brightest magnitudes are listed first); Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Those for Pluto are the average brightness values ​​of the planet at its closest approach to Earth. Here you’ll find your guide to discovering other planets orbiting the sun, from bright Venus and red Mars to majestic Jupiter and graceful Saturn.

Some Notes on the Orbit of Planets

The planets orbit the sun at different speeds, and the Earth orbits the sun, so the combination of these motions means we see planets in the night sky at different times of year. On the other hand, planets visible to the naked eye are close enough to Earth to form a significant (but still small) disk in the night sky, so when they are well above the horizon, planets emit more light-stabilized light . than they are stars.

Stars are farther from us than planets, so the star’s beam is more susceptible to its passage through our atmosphere than the beam of a closer planet. About every 15 years, Saturn’s famous ring systems appear on the fringes of Earth’s field of view, when they can only be seen as thin lines in telescopes — or not at all — so Saturn appears in Earth’s field of view. Much dimmer. world. Sky.

Earth appears as a bright blue object, obscured by the closer silhouette of Saturn and the beams of Saturn’s rings in the foreground. According to NASA representatives, the planet is most similar to Earth. After a spectacular fall in 2020, Mars has been lagging behind when it came within 38.6 million miles (62.1 million kilometers) of Earth and briefly became the third-brightest object in the night sky. .

Driven by curiosity, amateur astronomer Nicholas Holmes created an animation to show what the sky would look like if the planets orbited Earth at the same distance as the moon, according to Business Insider.

Nicholas Finn

I've been the captain of a fishing boat for over 20 years, and I created Pirateering to share my knowledge of and interest in seafaring.

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