July 2, 2012 at 6:51 pm

Picture of the Day: If Jupiter Was the Same Distance as the Moon

by twistedsifter

 

IF JUPITER WAS THE SAME DISTANCE AS THE MOON

 

if jupiter was as close to earth as the moon Picture of the Day: If Jupiter Was the Same Distance as the Moon

Artwork by jb2386 on Reddit

 

What if Jupiter were the same distance from the Earth as the Moon? How would it look in our sky? It’s an interesting question that isn’t entirely straightforward as it can depend on things such as, relative size to the entire night sky vs what we typically see in our field of view when we look at the moon. For a great read on human perception vs scientific accuracy, this post on ScienceBlogs is worth a perusal. It’s based on another video that attempted a similar visualization (I’ve posted it below for reference).

It also raises interesting scenarios and thoughts about Jupiter’s impact on our planet if it actually were that close since it is so much bigger in mass and size. Let’s just say it wouldn’t be good unless you like giant tidal waves and volcanoes. A chilling scenario can be read here.

So how did Redditor jb2386 make this picture? He took a source picture that had the moon in it, used the correct scale of the Moon to Jupiter and then placed the readjusted size of Jupiter in the image accordingly. Keep in mind that in the picture we are only seeing about a quarter of Jupiter in the frame.

Here are some rough numbers to play around with: Earth diameter: 12,756 km, Moon Diameter: 3,475 km, Jupiter Diameter: 140,000 km (approx.), Earth to moon distance: 385,000 km (approx)