Chris Miller
02-11-2015, 11:07 PM
Continuing my astronomical bender, I came across an actual image, taken by NASA, of Saturn's sky.
The Cassini flier was actually able to get a picture from within the atmosphere, to snap a photograph of a sky that looks very familiar. The dark lines are actually the shadows cast by the rings, and you can see the moon Mimas. This was not at all what NASA expected to find, given the yellowish color of the planet.
-=SPOILER=-
More on that here. (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/17feb_bluesaturn/)
One John Kaufman, a graphic artist, correctly predicted the color of the skies of several planets in our solar system, a little over ten years ago, using a relatively simple method. You can read all about it here, it's a fairly short page: http://jek2004.com/new_page_18.htm
Jupiter:
-=SPOILER=-
Saturn:
-=SPOILER=-
Uranus:
-=SPOILER=-
Neptune:
-=SPOILER=-
If you were to visit any of those planets, that's more or less what you could expect to see. Though Kaufman did exaggerate the moons somewhat.
Interesting fact: Even given Neptune's distance from the sun, it still gets a lot of light(relatively speaking). It would still be painful to stare into the sun at that distance.
The Cassini flier was actually able to get a picture from within the atmosphere, to snap a photograph of a sky that looks very familiar. The dark lines are actually the shadows cast by the rings, and you can see the moon Mimas. This was not at all what NASA expected to find, given the yellowish color of the planet.
-=SPOILER=-
More on that here. (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/17feb_bluesaturn/)
One John Kaufman, a graphic artist, correctly predicted the color of the skies of several planets in our solar system, a little over ten years ago, using a relatively simple method. You can read all about it here, it's a fairly short page: http://jek2004.com/new_page_18.htm
Jupiter:
-=SPOILER=-
Saturn:
-=SPOILER=-
Uranus:
-=SPOILER=-
Neptune:
-=SPOILER=-
If you were to visit any of those planets, that's more or less what you could expect to see. Though Kaufman did exaggerate the moons somewhat.
Interesting fact: Even given Neptune's distance from the sun, it still gets a lot of light(relatively speaking). It would still be painful to stare into the sun at that distance.