Many people have tried to visualize how big the planets are in relation to each other and to large objects we’re more personally familiar with. Space and the objects in it are unfathomably big, so this type of contextualization is helpful for us to understand just how large celestial objects like the moon or Jupiter are. Many of these illustrations and videos have accomplished their goals pretty well, but this video from yeti dynamics does a great job at showing how big planets in our solar system are by placing them in a context we can easily understand: our sky.
We have an idea of how big the moon is compared to Earth — its diameter is roughly a quarter of Earth’s — so when this clip replaces the moon in a typical daytime sky with other planets, it really shows how surprisingly big these bodies are. The video shows Mars, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn, and the planets start out looking pretty normal until we get to the final two, which cover up the majority of the visible sky.
The maker of this video did more than just create the stunning visualizations, though. The video description also explains his process deeply and gets into a bit of trivia about what it would be like if these planets actually were as close as the moon. Our tides would be messed up, our atmosphere could be destroyed, and our planet would actually become a moon to Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune.
Check out the video on YouTube for more facts, and let us know in the comments if you feel bad that Pluto was left out of both the solar system and this video.
Featured image: yeti dynamics/YouTube
