You could fit all the planets within the average distance to the Moon.
I ran into this intriguing infographic over on Reddit that claimed that you could fit all the planets of the Solar System within the average distance between the Earth and the Moon.
I’d honestly never heard this stat before, and it’s pretty amazing how well they tightly fit together.
But I thought it would be a good idea to doublecheck the math, just to be absolutely certain. I pulled my numbers from NASA’s Solar System Fact Sheets, and they’re a little different from the original infographic, but close enough that the comparison is still valid.
So what could we do with the rest of that distance? Well, we could obviously fit Pluto into that slot. It’s around 2,300 km across. Which leaves us about 2,092 km to play with. We could fit one more dwarf planet in there (not Eris though, too big).
The amazing Wolfram-Alpha can make this calculation for you automatically: total diameter of the planets. Although, this includes the diameter of Earth too.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter turned for a quick look at Earth and one of our closest planetary neighbors—Mars. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University,
Wow, this doesn’t happen very often: Earth and Mars together in one photo. To make the image even more unique, it was taken from lunar orbit by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. This two-for-one photo was was acquired in a single shot on May 24, 2014, by the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on LRO as the spacecraft was turned to face the Earth, instead of its usual view of looking down at the Moon.
The LRO imaging team said seeing the planets together in one image makes the two worlds seem not so far apart, and that the Moon still might have a role to play in future exploration.
“The juxtaposition of Earth and Mars seen from the Moon is a poignant reminder that the Moon would make a convenient waypoint for explorers bound for the fourth planet and beyond!” said the LRO team on their website. “In the near-future, the Moon could serve as a test-bed for construction and resource utilization technologies. Longer-range plans may include the Moon as a resource depot or base of operations for interplanetary activities.”
Watch a video created from this image where it appears you are flying from the Earth to Mars:
The LROC team said this imaging sequence required a significant amount of planning, and that prior to the “conjunction” event, they took practice images of Mars to refine the timing and camera settings.
When the spacecraft captured this image, Earth was about 376,687 kilometers (234,062 miles) away from LRO and Mars was 112.5 million kilometers away. So, Mars was about 300 times farther from the Moon than the Earth.
The NAC is actually two cameras, and each NAC image is built from rows of pixels acquired one after another, and then the left and right images are stitched together to make a complete NAC pair. “If the spacecraft was not moving, the rows of pixels would image the same area over and over; it is the spacecraft motion, combined with fine-tuning of the camera exposure time, that enables the final image, such as this Earth-Mars view,” the LRO team explained.
Check out more about this image on the LRO website, which includes a zoomable, interactive version of the photo.
If you could stand on the Moon and look back at the Earth, what would you see? How would it compare from our familiar vantage point?
We know what the Moon looks like from Earth, but what would the Earth look like from the Moon?
Pretty strange, actually.
The Moon is tidally locked to us, and it presents only one face to the Earth.
If you were on the near side of the Moon, the Earth would always be in the sky. And if you were on the far side, you’d never see it.
Also, it’s weird there. So you’d probably want to move.
If you were standing on the Moon, looking up, you’d see the Earth, hanging in the sky forever, or for however long your robot body holds out.
It would go through phases, like the Moon, moving from total darkness, though quarter illumination, Full Earth, and back again. But the features on the Earth would be changing. The face of the Earth would be illuminated, and you’d see the entire planet turning throughout the day and you could use it to cheat on Geography tests.
It wouldn’t be totally dark on the night side because “humans”. You’d see those beautiful blobs of stringy light on the shadowed parts of the Earth.
Our Moon follows an elliptical path around the Earth, getting as close as 363,000 km and as far as 405,000 km.
This means the Earth would get bigger and smaller in the sky. As Earth is much larger than the Moon, it would take up 13 times as much area.
The Earth wouldn’t actually hang motionless in the sky. We see lunar libration from our perspective, which lets us peek around the corner of the Moon. But from the Moon, we’d see the Earth move back and forth in the sky over 27 days.
Earthrise (credit—Apollo 8/NASA)
Remember this famous Earthrise photo captured by Apollo 8? It’s on every single sales brochure for lunar real estate.
Don’t be fooled, if you were on the Moon, you’d never see an Earthrise like that.
In fact, the only way to get a view like that is be on a spacecraft orbiting the Moon.
If I lived on the Moon, I’d want property Earthside.
Would you like to see the Earth from the Moon? What other views of the Solar System would you like to get?
And if you like what you see, come check out our Patreon page and find out how you can get these videos early while helping us bring you more great content!
ISS-RapidScat instrument, shown in this artist's rendering, was launched to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX CRS-4 mission on Sept. 21, 2014 and attached at ESA’s Columbus module. It will measure ocean surface wind speed and direction and help improve weather forecasts, including hurricane monitoring. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johnson Space Center.
NASA inaugurated a new era of research for the International Space Station (ISS) as an Earth observation platform following the successful installation and activation of the ISS-RapidScat science instrument on the outposts exterior at Europe’s Columbus module.
The ISS Rapid Scatterometer, or ISS-RapidScat, is NASA’s first research payload aimed at conducting near global Earth science from the station’s exterior and will be augmented with others in coming years.
RapidScat is designed to monitor ocean winds for climate research, weather predictions, and hurricane monitoring.
The 1280 pound (580 kilogram) experimental instrument is already collecting its first science data following its recent power-on and activation at the station.
“Its antenna began spinning and it started transmitting and receiving its first winds data on Oct.1,” according to a NASA statement.
The first image from RapidScat was released by NASA on Oct. 6, shown below, and depicts preliminary measurements of global ocean near-surface wind speeds and directions.
Launched Sept. 21, 2014, to the International Space Station, NASA’s newest Earth-observing mission, the International Space Station-RapidScat scatterometer to measure global ocean near-surface wind speeds and directions, has returned its first preliminary images. Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech
The $26 million remote sensing instrument uses radar pulses to observe the speed and direction of winds over the ocean for the improvement of weather forecasting.
“Most satellite missions require weeks or even months to produce data of the quality that we seem to be getting from the first few days of RapidScat,” said RapidScat Project Scientist Ernesto Rodriguez of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, which built and manages the mission.
“We have been very lucky that within the first days of operations we have already been able to observe a developing tropical cyclone.
“The quality of these data reflect the level of testing and preparation that the team has put in prior to launch,” Rodriguez said in a NASA statement. “It also reflects the quality of the spare QuikScat hardware from which RapidScat was partially assembled.”
RapidScat, payload was hauled up to the station as part of the science cargo launched aboard the commercial SpaceX Dragon CRS-4 cargo resupply mission that thundered to space on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Sept. 21.
Dragon was successfully berthed at the Earth-facing port on the station’s Harmony module on Sept 23, as detailed here.
It was robotically assembled and attached to the exterior of the station’s Columbus module using the station’s robotic arm and DEXTRE manipulator over a two day period on Sept 29 and 30.
Ground controllers at Johnson Space Center intricately maneuvered DEXTRE to pluck RapidScat and its nadir adapter from the unpressurized trunk section of the Dragon cargo ship and attached it to a vacant external mounting platform on the Columbus module holding mechanical and electrical connections.
Fascinating: #Canadarm & Dextre installed the #RapidScat Experiment on Columbus! @ISS_Research @NASAJPL @csa_asc. Credit: ESA/NASA/Alexander Gerst
The nadir adapter orients the instrument to point at Earth.
The couch sized instrument and adapter together measure about 49 x 46 x 83 inches (124 x 117 x 211 centimeters).
Engineers are in the midst of a two week check out process that is proceeding normally so far. Another two weeks of calibration work will follow.
Thereafter RapidScat will begin a mission expected to last at least two years, said Steve Volz, associate director for flight programs in the Earth Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, at a prelaunch media briefing at the Kennedy Space Center.
RapidScat is the forerunner of at least five more Earth science observing instruments that will be added to the station by the end of the decade, Volz explained.
The second Earth science instrument, dubbed CATS, could be added by year’s end.
The Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) is a laser instrument that will measure clouds and the location and distribution of pollution, dust, smoke, and other particulates in the atmosphere.
CATS is slated to launch on the next SpaceX resupply mission, CRS-5, currently targeted to launch from Cape Canaveral, FL, on Dec. 9.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo capsule packed with science experiments and station supplies blasts off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, at 1:52 a.m. EDT on Sept. 21, 2014, bound for the ISS. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
This has been a banner year for NASA’s Earth science missions. At least five missions will be launched to space within a 12 month period, the most new Earth-observing mission launches in one year in more than a decade.
ISS-RapidScat is the third of five NASA Earth science missions scheduled to launch over a year.
NASA managers show installed location of ISS-RapidScat instrument on the ESA Columbus module on an ISS scale model at the Kennedy Space Center press site during launch period for the SpaceX CRS-4 Dragon cargo mission. Posing are Steve Volz, associate director for flight programs in the Earth Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, and Howard Eisen, RapidScat Project Manager. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Learn more about Commercial Space Taxis, Orion and NASA Human and Robotic Spaceflight at Ken’s upcoming presentations:
Oct 14: “What’s the Future of America’s Human Spaceflight Program with Orion and Commercial Astronaut Taxis” & “Antares/Cygnus ISS Rocket Launches from Virginia”; Princeton University, Amateur Astronomers Assoc of Princeton (AAAP), Princeton, NJ, 7:30 PM
Oct 23/24: “Antares/Cygnus ISS Rocket Launch from Virginia”; Rodeway Inn, Chincoteague, VA
Perseid meteor as seen from the ISS by astronaut Ron Garan on August 13, 2011. Credit: NASA/Ron Garan.
We’ve featured several timelapse compilations of footage and imagery taken from the International Space Station (like here, here and here) but this one put together by Phil Selmes is great in that it also includes footage *of* the ISS, as shot by the astronauts on the space shuttle as well as actual space to ground audio communications. Phil said he included the audio clips “to remind the audience of the humanity that inhabits the space station.”
There is just something about these videos from the ISS that speaks to your soul. Phil told Universe Today that while putting this together, he saw “how different our world looks just 370kms above our heads. I didn’t see politics, races, borders, countries, religions or differences,” he said via email. “I saw one planet, one world, one incredibly beautiful miracle in the absolute vastness of the universe. It gave me some perspective, ironically it brought me ‘back to earth.’”
Imagery from the new ESA timelapse in 4K from the International Space Station.
Holy moly! Take a look at this new 4K timelapse video from ESA created from imagery taken by astronaut Alexander Gerst. Before you watch, however, you might want to change your video viewing setting to as high as they can go.
The imagery was taken at a resolution of 4256 x 2832 pixels at a rate of one every second. ESA said the high resolution allowed their production team to create a 3840 x 2160 pixel movie, also known as Ultra HD or 4K.
Playing these sequences at 25 frames per second, the film runs 25 times faster than it looks for the astronauts in space. They also did some nice effects creating trails from from stars and lights from cities on Earth for that “hyper-space” look. There’s a great sequence starting at about :55 of the Orbital Cygnus capsule being unberthed from the ISS and then it zooms away from the station.
NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman Tweeted this photo of Thailand at night on Aug. 18, 2014
“Bangkok is the bright city. The green lights outside the city? No idea…” This was the description accompanying the photo above, perplexingly Tweeted by Expedition 40/41 astronaut Reid Wiseman on Aug. 18, 2014. And while we’ve all seen fascinating photos of our planet shared by ISS crew members over the years this one is quite interesting, to say the least. Yes, there’s the bright illumination of Bangkok’s city lights, along with some stars, moonlit cloud cover extending northeast and the fine line of airglow over the horizon, but what are those acid-green blotches scattered throughout the darkness of the Gulf of Thailand? Bioluminescent algal blooms? Secret gamma-ray test labs? Underwater alien bases?
The answer, it turns out, actually is quite fishy.
The offshore illumination comes from fishing boats, which use enormous arrays of bright green LED lights to attract squid and plankton to the surface.
According to an an Oct. 2013 article on NASA’s Earth Observatory site by Michael Carlowicz, “…fishermen from South America and Southeastern Asia light up the ocean with powerful lamps that attract the plankton and fish species that the squid feed on. The squid follow their prey toward the surface, where they are easier for fishermen to catch with jigging lines. Squid boats can carry more than a hundred of these lamps, generating as much as 300 kilowatts of light per boat.”
Seen from orbit, the lights from squid fishing fleets rival the glow of the big cities! What might this look like from sea level? According to photos shared by one travel blogger in 2013, this.
Watch a video time-lapse from an ISS pass over the same region on Jan. 30, 2014.
A Twitter HT to Reid Wiseman and Peter Caltner for the photo and information on the cause, respectively.
Update 8/20/14: This article and image have been mentioned on NASA’s Earth Observatory site in a new post by Michael Carlowicz.
Anyone who lives close to ocean is familiar with the tides. And you probably know they have something to do with the Moon. But how do the tides work? Do other planets experience tides?
Just what the heck are tides? Some kind of orbit jiggle jello effect from the magic Etruscan space-whale song? Is it an unending slap-back of gravitometric Malthusian resonance originating from the core of the Sun’s crystalline liver-light organelles? Is it all the plankton agreeing to paddle in the same direction at their monthly oceanic conferences?
As certain as I am that you enjoy my word terminology salads, with apologies to Papa Bear, we both know tides are caused by the gravitational interaction with the Moon. You would think we’d have only one high tide and one low tide, with the Moon pulling the Earth’s water towards it. Moon goes one side, water rushes over to that side, moon goes to other side, water chases around to follow it. But the tides make the water levels appear to rise twice a day, and lower twice a day in 6 hour increments. So, it’s clearly more complicated than that.
The gravity from the Moon does pull the water towards it. That’s what gives you the highest tide of the day. It’s a bulge of water that follows the Moon around and around as the Earth rotates. This makes sense to us. But then Earth itself is pulled with a little less gravity than the water towards the Moon and, the water on the opposite side of the Earth is pulled with even less gravity, and so you wind up with another bulge on the opposite side of the Earth.
So from our perspective, you end up with a bulge of water towards the Moon, and a bulge away from it. The part of the Earth with the water getting pulled towards the Moon experiences a high tide, and same with the part on the opposite side of the Earth with the other bulge. Correspondingly, the parts of the Earth at right angles are experiencing low tides.
It would be hard enough to predict with a simple spherical Earth covered entirely by water, but we’ve got continents and coastlines, and that makes things even more complicated. The levels that the tides rise and fall depend quite a bit on how easily the water can move around in a region. That’s why you can get such big tides in places like the Bay of Fundy in Canada.
The Moon over Gulf Islands National Seashore near Navarre Beach, Florida. Credit: Mindi Meeks.
Our Sun also contributes to the tides. Surprisingly, it accounts for about 30% of the them. So when the Sun and the Moon are lined up in the sky, you get the highest high tides and the lowest low tides – these are Spring Tides. And then when the Sun and Moon are at right angles, you get the lowest high tides and the highest low tides. These are Neap Tides.
Tidal forces can be very powerful. They can tear galaxies apart and cause moons to get shredded into pieces. Perhaps the most dramatic example is how Jupiter’s enormous gravity pulls on Io so strongly that its surface rises and falls by 100 meters. This is 5 times greater than the Earth’s biggest water tides. This constant rise and fall heats up the moon, giving it non-stop volcanism.
What do you think? Share your favorite tidal science fact in the comments below. And if you like what you see, come check out our Patreon page and find out how you can get these videos early while helping us bring you more great content!
"The Chemistry of the Solar System" by Compound Interest's Andy Brunning
Here on Earth we enjoy the nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere we’ve all come to know and love with each of the approximately 24,000 breaths we take each day (not to mention the surprisingly comfortable 14.7 pounds per square inch of pressure it exerts on our bodies every moment.) But every breath we take would be impossible (or at least quickly prove to be deadly) on any of the other planets in our Solar System due to their specific compositions. The infographic above, created by UK chemistry teacher Andy Brunning for his blog Compound Interest, breaks down — graphically, that is; not chemically — the makeup of atmospheres for each of the planets. Very cool!
In addition to the main elements found in each planet’s atmosphere, Andy includes brief notes of some of the conditions present.
“Practically every other planet in our solar system can be considered to have an atmosphere, apart from perhaps the extremely thin, transient atmosphere of Mercury, with the compositions varying from planet to planet. Different conditions on different planets can also give rise to particular effects.”
– Andy Brunning, Compound Interest
And if you’re thinking “hey wait, what about Pluto?” don’t worry — Andy has included a sort of postscript graphic that breaks down Pluto’s on-again, off-again atmosphere as well. See this and more descriptions of the atmospheres of the planets on the Compound Interest blog here.
Sooner or later we’re going to want to move the Earth further away from the Sun. It turns out, there are a few techniques that might actually make this possible. Not easy, but possible.
You live here. I live here. Everybody lives here. For now.
In 500 million years the gradual heating of the Sun will burn away all life on Earth. Then we might have to move. Even if we get past the 500 million year deadline, the Sun will die as a red giant in about 5 billion years.
Let’s review our options? We could die… orrrr we could move the Earth. Just like any other mad science scheme, there’s a hundred ways to skin this cat. We could launch powerful rockets off the Earth, which would push the Earth a little bit in the opposite direction.
We could build a giant teleporter and disassemble the Earth atom by atom into a new location. We could repeatedly smash things into the Earth. Eventually knocking it off orbit, possibly also changing its axis and or rotation.
We could paint half the Earth silver, stop it rotating and let the Sun push it away. We could dig a giant hole down to the core and repeatedly detonate warheads inside the Earth forcing molten material to fly off into space, propelling us forwards like a deflating balloon.
Sure, maybe that does all sound a little crazy. We could build a gravity tug, and slowly pull the Earth away from the Sun. What’s a gravity tug? I’m so glad you asked.
You could build a solar sail with a huge mass connected to it. This gigantic weight would want to fall towards the Earth, and the Earth slowly drifts towards the weight. The solar sail is being pushed away by the Sun dragging both the weight and as a result the Earth along with it. This would take a very, very, very long time.
The Solar Sail demonstration mission. Credit: NASA
Here’s the best idea scientists have come up with so far. Gravity assists: Attach rockets to an asteroid, comet or Kuiper belt object and have it fall on a trajectory that takes it close to the Earth. Earth and this space rock would exchange a little momentum.
The rock slows down a bit and goes into a new orbit, and the Earth speeds up a little. That additional momentum pushes our orbit up a tiny little bit, and now we’re further away from the Sun. You’d need to do this tens of thousands or even a million times.
You might think, “Hey, that’s crazy. Where would you get all this stuff to hurl past the Earth?”. Don’t worry, the Oort cloud alone has billions of objects with a total of 30 times the mass of the Earth.
To prepare for Roastpocalypse, If we started now, we should cause a close pass with a large object every few thousand years. We bring them within 10,000 km of the surface of the Earth, which would have the likely side effect of causing severe tides and storms.
The layout of the solar system, including the Oort Cloud, on a logarithmic scale. Credit: NASA
Oh, and get the math wrong and you’ll smash an asteroid into the Earth. Just so you know, these would be way bigger than the object that killed the dinosaurs. One hit from a 100km diameter object would sterilize the biosphere.
If we pushed the Earth out to about 1.5 times its current orbit, which might get a little too cozy with Mars for comfort, we’d give the Earth another 5 billion years of habitability,
Then the Sun turns into a red giant, and then dies as a white dwarf. And nothing can help us then… except perhaps some kind of planet sized star gate.
What do you think? What’s the best suggestion you’ve got to move the Earth out to a safe distance? Tell us in the comments below.
