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Moons of all the planets in our solar system

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11–20 of 38 posts

Re: Moons of all the planets in our solar system

#11
post #6

I'm surprised we haven't seen more hard sci-fi in the jovian or cronian systems. While constant 1g acceleration drives open the whole solar system to the ~month travel time that benefits stories, much more realistic accelerations (or limited fuel) can still manage the same within those systems. Add to that the plethora of interesting moons, rings, and gravitational points to focus people and material around and the a…

I think it is because aliens are more interesting than moons. Anyways, Expanse is amazing, I hope they improve for the last book in the series. Tiamat's Wrath was not the best.

Re: Moons of all the planets in our solar system

#12
Whenever people say they were born too late to explore the earth or too young to explore space i dont understand it. Something like 90% of the objects in our solar system have been discovered in the last ~15 years. There's tons more out there. Sure the major planets and their moons are here, but you scroll to the bottom of this list there's unconfirmed dwarf planets. And likely moons of them as well

Re: Moons of all the planets in our solar system

#14

There is a comment on the site that the Galilean Moons of Jupiter can be seen with the naked eye under dark skies. I've known people who might have eyes good enough to do that, but for the rest of us even a modest pair of binoculars is enough. To me, it's one of the funnest things you can view in the northern hemisphere without getting out more serious equipment. (Another would be the Orion nebula. If you can set the…

Try viewing the jovian moons in winter when the atmoshpere is stable. Try with binoculars first to see where the moons are then try to focus your eyes on the system without the binocs. My eyes are terrible but I see those moons every winter To see the red spot you will need a telescope. To see it for more than a few seconds you will need an expensive telescope hopefully with auto tracking and the red spot must be in view When I was a young boy a person showed me the rings of Saturn and it blew my mind. I've since bought tools to help me see not only Saturn's rings but to study the Cassini divisions separating the rings There are all kinds of cool stuff overhead

Re: Moons of all the planets in our solar system

#16
post #6

I'm surprised we haven't seen more hard sci-fi in the jovian or cronian systems. While constant 1g acceleration drives open the whole solar system to the ~month travel time that benefits stories, much more realistic accelerations (or limited fuel) can still manage the same within those systems. Add to that the plethora of interesting moons, rings, and gravitational points to focus people and material around and the a…

The books are great and the TV series is now on Amazon Prime, with future seasons coming. Anybody on HN ought to be watching it.

Re: Moons of all the planets in our solar system

#17
Very nice summary of the moons. I showed it to my kids.

Though I was surprised to find a scientific astronomy related page using inches and Fahrenheit units.

Though I guess the target audience it has been made for is perhaps US based school kids, but the page works really well for anyone across the world.

Re: Moons of all the planets in our solar system

#19

Whenever people say they were born too late to explore the earth or too young to explore space i dont understand it. Something like 90% of the objects in our solar system have been discovered in the last ~15 years. There's tons more out there. Sure the major planets and their moons are here, but you scroll to the bottom of this list there's unconfirmed dwarf planets. And likely moons of them as well

The last trip to Pluto reminded me of being a kid again, when I pored over the newspaper looking at Voyager's trips to the gas giants.

Re: Moons of all the planets in our solar system

#20
post #6

I'm surprised we haven't seen more hard sci-fi in the jovian or cronian systems. While constant 1g acceleration drives open the whole solar system to the ~month travel time that benefits stories, much more realistic accelerations (or limited fuel) can still manage the same within those systems. Add to that the plethora of interesting moons, rings, and gravitational points to focus people and material around and the a…

I'm surprised we haven't seen more hard sci-fi in the jovian or cronian systems. While constant 1g acceleration drives open the whole solar system to the ~month travel time that benefits stories, much more realistic accelerations (or limited fuel) can still manage the same within those systems.

If an entire Sci-fi continuity were limited to just Sol and Alpha Centauri, this by itself would constitute an inexhaustible number of potential settings. In addition to planets, moons, asteroids, dwarf planets, Oort cloud and Kuiper belt class objects, there could also be space stations numbering in the tens of millions. Such a setting could use known physics, yet be incredibly vast. The Expanse is going in this direction, but doesn't go that far, and doesn't stick to known physics. (Though it remains closer to it than almost all Sci-fi continuities out there.)

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