Shouldn't the rings of Neptune and Uranus be faintly visible?

FloydA: PreMortem: Why is Earth's moon "The Moon" but all other planets moons are named?

Because until about 400 years ago, we thought it was the only one.

^^^THIS^^^

I've always thought that this was an interesting little tidbit, but I knew why it happened.

The only thing I don't understand about this is why Venus is the only one casting light. Obviously if Jupiter were that big and close, it would light things up more than the moon currently does, but the sky is the same illumination in every picture except Venus'. It's like the guy forgot that part in all pof the other pics.

Other than that, this is totally cool... Can you imagine how farked up our planet would be if Jupiter was that close to us? We definitely wouldn't be here, and might be as volcanically active as Io.

Mikey1969: The only thing I don't understand about this is why Venus is the only one casting light. Obviously if Jupiter were that big and close, it would light things up more than the moon currently does, but the sky is the same illumination in every picture except Venus'. It's like the guy forgot that part in all pof the other pics.

It's probably because Venus reflects just about all the light hitting it. I actually don't think it's bright enough. And you wouldn't see the cloud bands, those are only visible in UV light. It would basically be a blinding disk in the sky of maybe a pale ivory color.

Another thing people don't realize is the Moon is really dark. It's basically the color of an asphalt parking lot. Here's a nice comparison between the Earth and the Moon:

Good use of ellipsis

Mikey1969: Can you imagine how farked up our planet would be if Jupiter was that close to us? We definitely wouldn't be here, and might be as volcanically active as Io.

Maybe. A lot of Io's activity has to do with the fact it's in a Laplace resonance with Europa and Ganymede. If it wasn't, the tidal forces acting on it would be much less.

What's cool about that resonance is that the power source for the constant heating is basically Jupiter's spin, which means those three moons will continue to be heated until they move out of resonance or Jupiter tidally locks with one of them. Since the resonance is a self-reinforcing system and Jupiter is a ginormous planet that rotates in 10 hours, that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

Cool tag?  If I saw Jupiter or Saturn, I would be G-d D@mn scared.

This seems out of date -- didn't Neptune's Great Dark Spot disappear?

theorellior: I actually don't think it's bright enough.

You do understand the point I'm making though, right? The rest of the objects should kick back more light than the moon, especially Jupiter. I would think that it might reflect enough to be as bright as day....

I could see why they wouldn't over-brighten the planet itself to show detail, but the sky and ground should be lightened up to give us that perspective. Like I said, I don't understand why only Venus seems to be the one they attempted that on.

PsyLord: Cool tag?  If I saw Jupiter or Saturn, I would be G-d D@mn scared.

http://www.futureincredible.com/wp-con tent/uploads/2012/03/E149.gif

/good movie, hot image

Tyrone Slothrop: [www.intuition-online.co.uk image 648x364]
/good movie, hot image

I loved that movie.  Good work, Tyrone.

Can't sleep.

Jupiter will eat me.

If Saturn was centred on the moon's orbit we'd be crushed by millions of tons of ice as we collided with the rings...........

I think the rings of Saturn should be much more dramatic than they appear.  With Saturn having an equatorial radius of about 60,000 km and the rings extending as far as 127,000 km out from the planet's equator, the rings would reach somewhere between a third and half way between the current position of the Moon and the Earth. The relative distance doesn't really come through when they just paste in photo taken from Earth like that.

Not only is that picture of Jupiter terrifying, it almost is beckoning you to fall into it in a bizarre mixture of C'thulu esque "I can see forever!" and Starbuck flying into the Maelstrom in BSG.

Honestly gives me the chills.

I always thought this was pretty cool:

What if Earth had rings like Saturn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNCBh2MLvdw

Luna and Sol are just as generic of names as Moon and Sun - they're just Latin instead of Germanic.

I'm kind of curious when in history it was figured out that the Sun is a star.