A very interesting image

[AstroMike]

I found this image, which I thought was pretty interesting.

It's a photomontage showing the relative sizes of the terrestrial planets and the six largest satellites.



I think it's neat!
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"The contemplation of celestial things will make man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs." -Marcus Cicero

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: AstroMike on 2002-02-13 00:17 ]</font>

[MongotheGreat]

I can't help but notice that Titan appears larger than Ganymede. Why is that? Isn't Ganymede supposed to be larger than Titan?

Nice picture, by the way.[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Mongo

[AstroMike]

Mongo, Titan is seen with its cloud cover which is about 300 km thicker than the solid body. The solid body of Titan is 5,150 km in diameter; Ganymede is 5,268 km in diameter.

By the way, I apologize that it's a black and white picture. A color image would be cooler, but I haven't found one yet.

_________________
"The contemplation of celestial things will make man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs." -Marcus Cicero

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: AstroMike on 2002-02-06 23:15 ]</font>

[GrapesOfWrath]

Yahbut they resized the images according to size. I checked the pixel sizes of the images, and Titan's image doesn't seem to be bigger than Ganymede's.

[James]

On 2002-02-06 22:50, AstroMike wrote:
I found this image, which I thought was pretty interesting.

It's a photomontage showing the relative sizes of the terrestrial planets and the six largest satellites.

Beautiful. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_cool.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Yahbut they resized the images according to size. I checked the pixel sizes of the images, and Titan's image doesn't seem to be bigger than Ganymede's.

I think it's the shadow on Titan's right side that's throwing everyone. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: James on 2002-02-07 07:16 ]</font>

[GrapesOfWrath]

On 2002-02-07 07:14, James wrote:
I think it's the shadow on Titan's right side that's throwing everyone.

Yeah, I guess so. You can use your imagination to make it bigger.

[CJSF]

Regarding Ganymede and Titan:

I did a "quick and dirty" comparison using Paint Shop Pro and it appears that they are about the same pixel size - which would make sense. Their diameters are so close that at the scale of the images you are talking a mere couple of pixels at most.

Titan is 98% the size of Ganymede - The measurement I get of Ganymede is 96 pixels wide. That would make the image of Titan, if it were a full disk, 94 pixels wide. Throw in the shadow and the indistinct edges and they appear the same size.
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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Christopher Ferro on 2002-02-07 07:56 ]</font>

[aurorae]

This is a cool picture. Even if it looks like Mars split in half. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

It made me look up some numbers, since off the top of my head I would have guessed that Triton was larger than Io or Europa (it isn't).

[Wiley]

Thanks for the pic, AstroMike.

It's always amazing to see how large Jupiter's moons actually are. And then its also amazing to see how relatively large our Moon (note: the capital M) is.

Thanks again.