by henk21cm » Wed May 21, 2008 9:03 pm
Mac Coak wrote:Would our Sun look that big if viewed from Mercury?
Suppose the image
APOD 2008-05-21 was taken by a 35 mm camera with a 50 mm lens. The vertical angle the camera would cover, would have been ≅ 25°. If you look at the image, and estimate the portion of the image the red dwarf is filling, it is nearly the entire vertical range. So it is of the order of 20°. When standing on Mercury, which is about three times closer to the sun than the earth, the sun will look three times larger than on earth: ≅1.5°: a factor 10 smaller than the red dwarf.
If todays APOD represents the image an astronaut would see, in stead of a camera, the red dwarf might seem to be even larger.
So, the answer is No.
[quote="Mac Coak"]Would our Sun look that big if viewed from Mercury? [/quote]
Suppose the image [url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0805/reddwarf_nielsen_big.jpg]APOD 2008-05-21[/url] was taken by a 35 mm camera with a 50 mm lens. The vertical angle the camera would cover, would have been ≅ 25°. If you look at the image, and estimate the portion of the image the red dwarf is filling, it is nearly the entire vertical range. So it is of the order of 20°. When standing on Mercury, which is about three times closer to the sun than the earth, the sun will look three times larger than on earth: ≅1.5°: a factor 10 smaller than the red dwarf.
If todays APOD represents the image an astronaut would see, in stead of a camera, the red dwarf might seem to be even larger.
So, the answer is No.