The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada

Moon & Saturn in Perspective

Moon & Saturn in Perspective

Here, I captured both our great big moon and tiny Saturn in the upper left corner, as the moon appeared to pass very close by Saturn. This really helps to appreciate some of the scale when talking bout just our solar system. Our moon has about a quarter the diameter of the earth's, but Saturn has about 10x that of the Earth not including Saturn's rings. On the other hand, the moon is about 385 thousand km away, but Saturn is about 1.2 Billion km away at it's closest distance to Earth. (I'm not sure how far away it was when I took the picture)

So, with Saturn about 40x the diameter of the moon, but over three thosand times farther away, this image shows some real perspective.

One other thing... It is really hard to get both Saturn and the moon properly exposed on the same image. This might be why so many people use mosaics.


Image Details

 

 

Moon & Saturn in Perspective
Image created: Mar 29, 2007
Image posted: Mar 29, 2007

Categories:   Moon   Planets  

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