How would our horizon look if Earth orbited around another star, such as Alfa-Centauri, Sirius, or Polaris? Roscosmos TV has released two new videos that replace our familiar Sun and Moon with other stars and planets. While these are completely fantastical — as Earth would have evolved very differently or not evolved at all in orbit around a giant or binary star — the videos are very well done and they give a new appreciation for the accustomed and comforting views we have. The Sun video is above; the Moon below:
Check out Roscosmos TV You Tube page — they have a great collection of videos, from launches to science to fantastical videos like the ones we featured here.
I just love the Polaris scene in the first video, and the Earth scene at the end of the second one is a very neat surprise!
Just a nitpick : Beware of the temperature ! With such a star as Polaris there will be only ashes left on earth ! But anyway an interesting video.
My favourite is the three stars of Alpha Centauri in the sky.
You know what would be really cool? A compact object with an accretion disc.
And next to the disc a road sign saying “Beware of potholes” 😉
The ‘moon’ vid at least is completely wrong. The film is shot with widely varying angles of view, from very wide angle to telephoto (bridge view), yet the planets apparent sizes don’t change. In the wide angle views, they are way too large, as anyone who has tried to include the sun or moon in a photo would notice.
As long as we’re picking nits, I’m surprised no one has commented on the lack of multiple shadows with numerous stars… Come on, you all can be more jaded if you truly wish to be.
Don’t you mean shady? 🙂
It would be nice if the captions were in English so that we can know which star is being shown.