What do our familiar constellations look like from the Moon, or Mars?
Wild guess here, but the constellations should appear relatively unchanged to the naked eye. The moon’s distance from the earth is almost negligible in comparison to the distance of the viewed objects, and since Luna more or less follows along the same orbital path that the earth takes around the sun, there shouldn’t be much difference to the naked eye. If you were in orbit further from the sun or an appreciable distance above or below the earth’s orbital plane (“above” and “below” perhaps being meaningless in this case), the constellations would show a more apparent change in shape.
Once again, this is just a guess. Please chip in with some real answers here, astronomers. I’d kind of like to know about this myself.
“It’s only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here.”
PS: As far as viewing from Mars, I still don’t think there would be much of a difference in viewing constellations. You would, of course, see a greater difference in the movements of planetary objects.
“It’s only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here.”
If you consider that the Earth revolves around the Sun each year, you’ll realize that the difference in the view from the moon would be a small fraction of the change you’d expect just on the Earth between summer and winter, which is none. And Mars is not that far from Earth’s orbit.
But also consider that the Sun and our solar system are zipping along while we revolve around the center of the galaxy, and the fact that the constellations have been pretty stationary for dozens of centuries that we’ve had documented, and you can see that the different view you’d get at Mars is a tiny change compared to how the constellations should have changed over time.
From anywhere in the solar system, the change in the constellations will be negligible. It probably wouldn’t be all that much over in Alpha Centauri.
If you went a few hundred lightyears away, though, things would be different.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
There would have to be some difference, despite what you’ve all said – consider that there’s a whole lot less atmosphere to get in the way of your stargazing on Luna or Mars. Any constellations will be less distinct because of the clutter of other stars in and around them.
–Da Cap’n
“Playin’ solitaire 'til dawn
With a deck of fifty-one.”
“Pathfinder, come in Pathfinder…”
They’d look quite the same really. Might change a little cause of the gas on the planet youlook thru.
Sorry about the leaps of logic in that post. To clarify for those who might not already know this: our atmosphere prevents us from seeing a lot of stars that would otherwise be visible from Earth. We also see fewer stars because of the bright lights we generate as a society. Mars has a thin atmosphere by contrast, and the moon has essentially none. Neither body has any light source of its own. Therefore, you’ll see a lot more stars on either one, and they may interfere with your ability to recognize constellations. All the stars will appear to be in the right places though.
Cap’n Gloss-over