Extremely Cool Astronomy News

[Slick]

code:

---

 



S

 

 

 





.......

       ........E...   

 angle of pic     .......M

       ...........

J.....



 

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Ok people, think in 3d spacially. The visible bands on Jupiter show the "plane" of the planets (since its axis is roughly perpendicular to the plane), however the plane is not totally flat and judging by the relative sizes, earth is much closer to the camera than Jupiter and slightly higher in the plane of the planets. This gives the "above" effect. The angle I show is for illustration purposes but must in actuality be very very small - almost zero so that the earth appears almost "above" Jupiter.

Slick.

[ May 23, 2003, 06:34: Message edited by: Slick ]

[Taz-in-Space]

Oh I get it...But perhaps more like this:

.......................................S

.................E

...........................M

J

And picture taken sideways to the orbit like you said.

Another question how did you insert spaces? I had to use periods to space out things.

[ May 23, 2003, 05:16: Message edited by: Taz-in-Space ]

[Taera]

very very cool picture
dunno if such thing exists but perharps its a curved U-shaped camera lens used there?

[Fyron]

Taz, he used the [ code] UBB tags (much like url and quote tags).

[Taz-in-Space]

Thanks Fyron.

Taz puts on his to-do list: research UBB code tags.

[Pax]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
That makes sense slick, but it still looks wrong to me. Shouldn't the planets be side to side instead of top to bottom? I thought maybe the image was sideways, but then the shadow on earth would be wrong and the cloud bands on jupiter too.

Geoschmo

Contrary to popular misconception, not EVERY planet's orbit lies in the exact same plane; there are angular differences between each (and it tends to follow a pattern, IIRC ... the inner planets further and further off of the plane of, say, Neptune's orbit).

As to their placement, I would suspect the following:

code:

---

.    J

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.                              S

.

.                E

.

.          ^

.          |

.          |

.          |

.          M

---

(The arrow denotes the direction of the camera; the periods are only to maintain vertical spacing)

Mainly due to the differences in what's "lit up" and what'snot; Earth is in almost peerfect profile, turned JUST a little away form the camera -- so the Sun should be not-quite directly to the right of the Earth, in terms of direction.

However, Jupiter is almost face-on to us; that means the angle from the camera to the sun, relative to Jupiter, mustn't be all THAT large.



[ May 23, 2003, 19:44: Message edited by: Pax ]

[Aloofi]

My, do we live in that little blue sphere?

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