I consider myself a fairly intelligent, college-educated individual, but lately, I’m seeing all these telescopic photos of the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction, and I’m confused as to how the two planets have close apparent sizes. How is this so, despite Saturn being millions of miles further away?
In: Physics
The distance from Earth to Saturn is currently about twice the distance from Earth to Jupiter, and Saturn is roughly the same size as Jupiter. Taking these two factors into account, I’d expect Saturn to currently appear to be roughly half the size of Jupiter in the night sky. This is consistent with what’s in the image.
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