Sunday, October 17, 2010

The Moon and the British Isles

The Moon and The British Isles

My sister and brother in law are in Europe at the moment (whose adventures can be found here), and while it is (almost) the furthest you can travel on this Earth from New Zealand (Spain is our antipode), I keep remembering that it is in not as far as many other places. Our Moon is about 5 times bigger than the British Isles, but the British Isles are 30 times closer to New Zealand. So, the picture above is what the British Isles would look like if they were instead in orbit around the Earth at a distance above New Zealand equal to the distance it is below it...

I had originally become excited that they would appear the same size in the sky through some (very strange) cosmic coincidence, but neglected to remember at the time that area is actually proportional to distance squared (The area of the British Isles is 30 times smaller than the visible two dimensional area of the Moon)

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