Planets Viewed From Earth as if They Were at the Distance of the Moon [Video]
This amazing video shows how the planets of the solar system would look if viewed from Earth as if they were orbiting around our planet at the distance of the Moon. Jupiter would nearly completely fill the sky. This video is of course not implying that something like this could happen. It merely compares the sizes of the planets and our moon in a quite original way. It also makes us realize how small the Earth really is compared to the gas giants. When a duplicate Earth is shown in the sky, it’s actually how large our Earth really looks from the Moon. That’s what the Apollo astronauts witnessed during…
Astronomy Picture of the Week – Planet Uranus with Moons
This is a photo montage of Uranus and five of it’s largest moons. The photos were taken separately by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. The moons, from largest to smallest as they appear here, are Ariel, Miranda, Titania, Oberon and Umbriel. When Voyager 2 visited the planet, it discovered 10 new smaller moons and took close-up pictures of its ring system. Image Credit: NASA/JPL
A Pulsar With Planets
A pulsar is probably the deadliest object in the Universe. Despite their beauty, you wouldn’t want to get close to one of them! They are a type of neutron star that emits a highly focused beam of electromagnetic radiation from both magnetic poles. This radiation, deadly to any form of life, can only be visible when one of the two beams is turned to face towards the observer (which is hopefully not anywhere close). The radiation is so strong that it would disintegrate the molecular bonds holding together DNA strands, killing any life in the process. Pulsars rotate in an extremely regular period. It’s this rotation that makes them pulse,…