- #1
wedouglas
- 2
- 0
Quick question that maybe someone here could answer. I could probably dig up a bunch of math equations and answer it too, but I'm guessing someone here already has a good idea about the answer.
Placing the Sun at the center of a sphere whose radius is equal to the distance of the Sun to Pluto, and then comparing it to such a sphere whose radius is the distance from the Earth to the Sun would lead me to believe that there is significantly less light hitting some place like Pluto than there is hitting the Earth.
Now if there is something like 1600x less light hitting Pluto, would that make a very noticeable difference in perceived brightness? What about Saturn, receiving something like 100x less light? I came to those numbers using the fact that Pluto and Saturn are 40x and 10x further from the Sun, respectively.
I feel like something receiving 100x, let alone 1600x less light than something else would be like day and night, but being that one could see Saturn with their naked eye from Earth at night, it must not be that much different. Is perceived brightness on such a scale that orders of magnitude aren't hugely different and that 100x isn't that much to the human eye?
This question kinda stems from the observation that movies always show space ships as bright when traveling through space, when in fact space is actually extremely dark. Just made me wonder how dark our solar system is in terms of perception.
Thanks!
Placing the Sun at the center of a sphere whose radius is equal to the distance of the Sun to Pluto, and then comparing it to such a sphere whose radius is the distance from the Earth to the Sun would lead me to believe that there is significantly less light hitting some place like Pluto than there is hitting the Earth.
Now if there is something like 1600x less light hitting Pluto, would that make a very noticeable difference in perceived brightness? What about Saturn, receiving something like 100x less light? I came to those numbers using the fact that Pluto and Saturn are 40x and 10x further from the Sun, respectively.
I feel like something receiving 100x, let alone 1600x less light than something else would be like day and night, but being that one could see Saturn with their naked eye from Earth at night, it must not be that much different. Is perceived brightness on such a scale that orders of magnitude aren't hugely different and that 100x isn't that much to the human eye?
This question kinda stems from the observation that movies always show space ships as bright when traveling through space, when in fact space is actually extremely dark. Just made me wonder how dark our solar system is in terms of perception.
Thanks!