Does the light of the sun reach and illuminate every planet in our solar system?
Question:
I figure since space is a vacuum and light moves unimpeded through space (provided it doesn't hit anything) it should do just as good a job on a far away planet as a near one, even if it would take longer to reach out towards the end of our solar system.
Answer:
The light from our sun reaches even distant solar systems. The stars you see in the sky at night are distant suns.
How illuminated on object in space can be depends on a few things. Two of the most important ones are:
1. Distance from the light source.
2. Reflectivity of the object.
3. The human eye.
The most reflective object in our solar system can't be seen with the human eyes. This is Saturn's moon Enceladus. But if you were approaching it, it'd most definatly appear illuminated.
Saturn's moon Iapetus, however, is a different story. Iapetus, also called the two tone moon, seems to have highly reflective material on one hemisphere and black material on the other. You can see a picture of it here
http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/...
In the darkness of space, most very large things in the solar system, granted you were close enough, would probably have some degree of illumination.
intensity follows the inverse-square law. twice the distance, only 1/4 the intensity. each planet beyond earth is roughly twice as far from the sun as the previous. not much intensity out there compared to earth.
Yes, the light from the Sun illuminates all the planets in our solar system. However, if you double the distance from the Sun, the light is only 1/4 as bright. From Saturn, the sunlight is only as bright as a full Moon on Earth. At Pluto, the Sun is just a very bright star.
The Sun does illuminate every planet in our "solar" system but not evenly. Like every other radiation light obeys the inverse square law, i.e. every time the distance is doubled the amount of light is decreased by 4 (2 squared). So that the further away the planet is the less light illuminates it.
However, if you were standing at the Sun and looking out at the planets they probably would display different brightnesses because of the different amounts of light reflected to us due to their different sizes. So that what we would see depends on the distance and the size of the planet.
The light gets out there but it's spread out really thin. The sun also looks a lot smaller from out there; it only looks like a big star from Pluto. Just like if you stand near a fire or far away, it's a lot colder far away.
Pluto is only visible through a telescope; what is really interesting is that the light has gone out there to Pluto, bounced off and travelled back to earth and into your eye. What a trip!
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