Astronomy: or How to Feel Small

[ElHombre]

I've been enjoying shocker1's thread about Saturnian views and thought I'd throw in some scale images.

First off, the inner planets...

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/4406/innerplanetsco2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Next, the outer planets (astronomy trivia: Jupiter masses more than twice the rest of the solar system combined)...

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/640/outerplanetsjl0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Now let's add good 'ol Sol...

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/7761/solxg0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Then some stellar neighbors...

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/9480/stellar1yk4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

And some more neighbors...

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/7384/stellar2yc6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Enjoy.

[szr]

Cool stuff. Even crazier is taking those scale models and spacing them at scaled distances!

[ElHombre]

Try this scale. If an AU (94 million miles. the distance from the sun to the Earth) is one inch, the solar system would be five feet across, and a light-year would be a mile. Alpha Centauri (the closest star system) would be four-and-a-half miles away.

[RECON DOC]

Very cool thread.

How interesting to look at the comparitive scale and realize the mass of the giant Antares.
And consider that the distance of it from us causes us to percieve it as a tiny
insignificant speck of light in the night sky when the opposite is true.

[shocker1]

Cool thread elhombre, we disagree on everthing political but we have alot in common with astronomy. Glad you are enjoying my planet threads, stay tuned for more.

[Flamming_Python]

It was once theorised that there could be stars the size of the whole solar system...

But with our current understanding of science, there is a limit on how big super-red giants can be. Once they reach this limit, the sheer pressure in them causes them to blow up and get rid of there outer shell (supernova). The rest of the mass then collapses under it's own gravity, causing them to fall into a neutron star, in which the force of gravity is big enough to negate the repulsion between the nucleus of the atoms (positive) and the electrons around it (positive). However, the nuetron star would still identifiable as conventional mass, with a conventional volume and with a limit on it's density, because all the nucleases of those atoms will still have enough force to negate each other. The nuetron star could still then be identified in our conventional 3 spatial dimensions as a sphere.

If the mass of the star is such (and consequently force of gravity) that even that even the even the repulsion between nucleases of atoms is overcome and negated, none of the forces that define reality would be there to stop it, and the star would promptly collapse into a black hole, wherby the density becomes infinite and the volume becomes nothing, and where all our old theories and understandings of physics break down into nothing as well.

[Flamming_Python]

Cool stuff. Even crazier is taking those scale models and spacing them at scaled distances!

In which case Antares would be the size of one-billionth of a pixel, if that...


Very cool thread.

How interesting to look at the comparitive scale and realize the mass of the giant Antares.
And consider that the distance of it from us causes us to percieve it as a tiny
insignificant speck of light in the night sky when the opposite is true.

To them we are even less then nothing. All bow down to the great Antarians! (how do you do that worship/bow down smilie BTW?)

[2Sheds_Jackson]

Very cool.

I'll just throw in that as insane as these scales are - remember that scientists theorize that we can only directly observe about 4% of the universe. For all the models to work, it requires a whopping 22% of the universe to be dark matter that we can't observe - and a whopping 74% dark energy (energy we can't observe). And all this stuff is not in some far flung corner of the universe, but everywhere - here in and among our planets.

Hard to get a grasp of how things work when 96% of the universe is invisible to us.

[Bryson C]

Very cool post.

[Eddy]

The gravity on Jupiter must be something

[ed316]

Nice pics. Beam me up to the mothership.

[STIG]

The gravity on Jupiter must be something

The magnetosphere (magnetic field) of Jupiter is about 30 million km across, larger than the entire Sun and 20,000 times stronger than the earths magnetic field....you would be dead way long before you could feel jupiters gravity;)

[Leonidas]

Does anyone remember the name of that newly discovered planet beyond Pluto?

[Jurpula]

Good post!

Didn't they name it XENA?

[Eddy]

The magnetosphere (magnetic field) of Jupiter is about 30 million km across, larger than the entire Sun and 20,000 times stronger than the earths magnetic field....you would be dead way long before you could feel jupiters gravity;)

Ahahah nice

[Chulo]

Cool stuff. Even crazier is taking those scale models and spacing them at scaled distances!
why make scale models and put them at scale distacne when u have the real thing!!!

[Ratamacue]

Does anyone remember the name of that newly discovered planet beyond Pluto?2003 UB313, nicknamed "Xena," and now officially known as Eris. And it's technically a dwarf planet (as is Pluto, and Ceres within our asteroid belt).

[Jobu]

I'm gonna need some Viagra tonight.

[ElHombre]

The magnetosphere (magnetic field) of Jupiter is about 30 million km across, larger than the entire Sun and 20,000 times stronger than the earths magnetic field....you would be dead way long before you could feel jupiters gravity;)

But you'd have this really cool blue glow to enjoy before your painful death.:-D

In regards to supernovas (-novae?), just recall that most of the heavier elements in the universe are the result of them. A good part of the atoms of your body were created billions of years ago in the explosion of a dying star.

[FallenAngel]

2003 UB313, nicknamed "Xena," and now officially known as Eris. And it's technically a dwarf planet (as is Pluto, and Ceres within our asteroid belt).

So we're at what? 8 planets and 3 dwarf planets (plus moons)?

[STIG]

In regards to supernovas (-novae?), just recall that most of the heavier elements in the universe are the result of them. A good part of the atoms of your body were created billions of years ago in the explosion of a dying star.

hence the saying " we are all made of star stuff" ;)

[Big D]

Here's a ytmnd of this. a slightly better quality pictures.

http://newsizeofourworld.ytmnd.com/

[STIG]

Here's a ytmnd of this. a slightly better quality pictures.

http://newsizeofourworld.ytmnd.com/


wow..that was awesome.

[W3s II]

Here's a ytmnd of this. a slightly better quality pictures.

http://newsizeofourworld.ytmnd.com/

Awesome, indeed.

Really makes one wonder what else is out there.

[Flak]

Awesome, indeed.

Really makes one wonder what else is out there.


Well, let's just say that the UWW (Universal Wide Web) will contain a lot of
spam, pop-ups and ****-sites....




:)

[PaulClift]

Dark matter makes my head hurt thinking about it, so it doesnt emit anything (light, radiation, xrays etc) but does have gravitional effects on things we can see, which is the reason we know its there?

[JQ24]

Here's a ytmnd of this. a slightly better quality pictures.

http://newsizeofourworld.ytmnd.com/

That's so cool! We're almost nonexistent compared to the other behemoth sized planets.

[szr]

Dark matter makes my head hurt thinking about it, so it doesnt emit anything (light, radiation, xrays etc) but does have gravitional effects on things we can see, which is the reason we know its there?
Yep. Given the mass that is visible to us and measurable by us in our galaxy, we can calculate the speed at which our galaxy should spin at. BUT, when we measure the actual speed, it's much faster than what it should be. At the actual speed the galaxy spins, we'd expect it to fly apart because we don't see enough mass to keep the galaxy gravitationally bound together. But it's not spinning apart. So we infer that there must be some other matter that we can't see, helping to keep the galaxy gravitationally bound in together.

[ElHombre]

Dark matter makes my head hurt thinking about it, so it doesnt emit anything (light, radiation, xrays etc) but does have gravitional effects on things we can see, which is the reason we know its there?

And if szr's answer doesn't make you reach for the aspirin, consider that there's also dark energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy). The rate that the universe is expanding is increasing. in english, the universe's expansion is speeding up. And we currently don't know why.

[LaoSexMachine]

DNC lies!!! What's the agenda Hombre? Kerry for President?

[Mahoro]

That's so cool! We're almost nonexistent compared to the other behemoth sized planets.

We are so insignificant, even in this world , my death won't has a single different in this world :-(

[Chris]

We are so insignificant, even in this world , my death won't has a single different in this world :-(

well, give it a try.. :D

whats this betelgeuse planet? sounds like beetlejuice

[Ratamacue]

well, give it a try.. :D

whats this betelgeuse planet? sounds like beetlejuiceBetelgeuse is a red supergiant star, not a planet. As for its name, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse#Origin_of_the_name_.22Betelgeuse.22):


The name is a corruption of the Arabic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language) يد الجوزا yad al-jawzā, or "hand of the central one". Jauza, the central one, initially referred to Gemini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_%28constellation%29) among the Arabs, but at some point they decided to refer to Orion by that name. During the Middle Ages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages) the first character of the name, y (ﻴ, with two dots under it), was misread as a b (ﺒ, with one dot under it) when transliterating into Latin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin), and Yad al-Jauza became Bedalgeuze. Then, during the Renaissance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance), it was theorized that the name was originally written as Bait al-Jauza, thought to mean "armpit of the central one" in Arabic, which led to the modern rendering as "Betelgeuse"; however, the actual translation of "armpit" would be ابط ("Ibţ").

[Chris]

thx, ...so I was right with beetlejuice. ;)