What If The Moon, Wasn't The Moon?

There are times that the moon looks beautiful at night, but when I try to get a picture, the moon is just too small in the sky to get anything really interesting. The only way I could capture something like that would be if I had a very expensive zoom lense which I just don’t have. But what if the moon wasn’t what we saw at night, but one of the other planets?

Minnesota-based artist and writer Ron Miller got curious about what the night sky would look like if the Moon was replaced with any other planet from the Solar system. To grasp the difference better, he replaced the Moon with 7 other planets, keeping them at the same distance as the Moon is from the Earth (which is around 240,000 miles), and did not alter the size proportions of the planets.

Ron does admit, however, that the manipulations leave some facts out of the consideration – for example, the changes in the atmospheric condition of Venus – but the photos are no less interesting. Speaking of Venus – imagine the night being as bright as day with it, as the planet reflects six times more light than the Moon! As for Mars, even though in size it would be similar to the Moon, “it would be easy to see with the naked eye details on the surface of the planet that were previously visible only through telescopes. You could watch the ice caps grow and shrink during the changing seasons, see dust storms form and move across the planet and make out features like Vallis Marineris and Olympus Mons.” How about that?

The most impressive photos, however, are those with the biggest planets replacing the Moon, such as Saturn (those rings!) or Jupiter (which is 40 times larger than the Moon). Would you rather replace the moon with one of the other planets? Or do you think you’d miss it if it were gone? Share with us in the comments below.