Saturn steals the moon's place in stunning city view
What if it were Saturn's rings or Jupiter's red spot coming up over the horizon? Russia's space agency imagined what life on such a parallel planet (or moon) might be like.
- Finalist for the Nesta Tipping Point prize and a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
An epic sunset or moonrise can often offer moments of unparalleled beauty, but what if instead of that friendly " man in the moon" coming up over the horizon, it was another of the planets from our solar system or a different star lighting our days?
Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, had a little fun in the below videos showing what life would be like if we saw different celestial bodies in our skies on a regular basis. What if, instead of a lone dead satellite lighting our nights, it was actually massive Jupiter or Saturn and its rings that greeted us around dusk?
While smaller planets like Mercury and Mars wouldn't appear dramatically different from our moon in the evening sky, the gas giants of our solar system would take up much larger chunks of our terrestrial view. Jupiter especially would dominate the sky. Be sure to watch to the very end of the video to get the trippy view of Earth orbited by another Earth.
But why stop there? Let's go even more far out, especially now that we know there are other planets in other solar systems out there, and we can even guess at what their sunrises and sunsets might look like. (Remember our evening on the beach on Kepler 186-f?)
Roscosmos also imagined what our days might look like if we orbited a star other than our sun. Watch the video below to see how Sirius, Arcturus, Vega, or, most spectacularly, our old friend the north star Polaris, might light up our world.
(Via Gizmodo)