Our Solar System is an incredibly beautiful place. It’s a diverse place full of remarkable sights and natural wonders, whether it’s the pockmarked volcanic surface of Mercury, the dusty crimson plains of Mars, the beautiful rings of Saturn, or even the blues and viridians of our own world.
We’d be nowhere without the Sun, to be sure, and artist and illustrator Ron Miller’s series of truly stunning visualizations of our local star – as seen from each planet, including the poor demoted Pluto – serve to remind you of that. He’s spent over 40 years illustrating the dark realms of space, both near and far, and has created the most realistic depictions of the Sun as seen from these distant worlds as possible.
“I’ve taken care in not only making sure the Sun is depicted realistically, but also the surfaces of the planets and satellites as well,” Miller told.
Despite the fact that Pluto is, at its most distant point, 7.5 billion kilometers (roughly 4.7 billion miles) away from Earth, the Sun still looks particularly bright. “While the Sun is smaller, it is still an immensely brilliant source of light,” Miller added. “The light levels on the surfaces around you [on Pluto] would be dusk-like, but the sun itself would still be a very bright object – just a small one.”
The brightness of the Sun is proportional to the square of the relative distance from it, according to physical laws. So, if you are now half as close to the Sun as you were before, the apparent brightness will be a quarter of what it was. (1/2)2 = 1/4, see?
This means that the brightness of the Sun decreases dramatically as you move away from it. The fact that it’s still bright by the time you get to Pluto is a remarkable testament to the sheer power of our nearest thermonuclear stellar furnace.
All images in text: Ron Miller
READ MORE: Take a Walk Around the Milky Way With This Brilliant Interactive Map
Beautiful and very well done. Glad you included poor old Pluto. When we got a close view of it, the planet(oid) seemed much more interesting than it had before.
Nice pictures