General Question

Yellowdog's avatar

Can Earth's moon be seen from the planet Venus?

Asked by Yellowdog (12216points) August 18th, 2020

To my knowledge, no moon of any other planet can be seen from Earth with the unaided eye. They are simply too small in relation to the planet.

But Venus, coming relatively much closer to Earth, and Earth’s moon being so much bigger than other moons in relation to the size of the planet it orbits, I am wondering if the moon can be seen as a tiny dot next to Earth if it could be seen from Venus.

And yes, I know nothing can be seen from Venus’ surface due to its atmosphere and intense heat. So this question is entirely theoretical,

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10 Answers

Mimishu1995's avatar

My guess is that it would look something like the Earth from the Moon, like depicted in movies.

filmfann's avatar

Yes and no.
Venus is in the perfect position to see our moon. It would definitely be visible from the planet…
EXCEPT
Venus has a gassy atmosphere that wouldn’t allow them to see anything, other than the brightness from the Sun, but still not a clear view of it.

ragingloli's avatar

Probably.
This is what venus looks like through a telescope @128 million km distance.
The moon is about a quarter of Venus’s diametre, so it should still be well visible from Venus, especially if Venus is a lot closer than that.

RocketGuy's avatar

If you are lucky and skilled, you might be able to see a moon or two of Jupiter: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2010JRASC.104..101M
so seeing our Moon from Venus (orbit) might not be so hard.

Yellowdog's avatar

I once had some strong binoculors in which several moons of Jupiter, if you could hold it still enough, were visible. With the unaided eye, I can sorta make out the shape that might be the rings of Saturn. And all the visible planets, like the stars themselves, seem to have a unique spectrum of light.

Caravanfan's avatar

@RocketGuy With a decent pair of binoculars you can see 4 moons of Jupiter. Not with the naked eye though.

I’d have to do arcminute calculations to figure out if the moon is visible from Venus. I don’t want to, but if someone is enterprising, this is how one could do it.

1) Look up the distance of the closest approach or Earth to Venus.
2) Look up the distance of the maximum lateral elongation of the moon away from the planet (as viewed from Venus)
3) Do some trigonometry to find out how many arcminutes away the moon is from the Earth from your vantage point on Venus.
4) Look up the resolution in arcminutes of the unaided eye.

That will give you your answer if the arcminutes is greater than the arcminute resolution of the unaided eye then you can see it. That’s too much work for me but that’s how you would do it.

Yellowdog's avatar

Thanks, @Caravanfan — for a factual answer.
Going on assumption, however—

(2) Because Venus is between Earth and the Sun, when it is closest to Earth it is only a thin sliver crescent—yet is beautifully and fully visible. But Earth, theoretically seen from Venus, could be seen full and whole with its entire face lit in full— would be much larger than the Venusian crescent. Earth would be quite a sight in the Venusian sky if it could be seen from the surface.

If the moon is, as @ragingloli says, a quarter of the Cytherean orb, then our moon would probably be very visible when in the right position.

Thanks, all—we just need to get those Venusian clouds out of the way and see it for ourselves…

RocketGuy's avatar

@Yellowdog – Venus’s atmosphere is thick enough that one could set up a dirigible and float around indefinitely. At that point, atmospheric pressure might be comfortable (though short of O2), and the acid concentration might not be very high. It could look like a Tibanna Gas Mine. The trick is that you would then be stuck in almost 1g, so would need a big rocket to get out to orbit and head home.

Yellowdog's avatar

Hmmmm—maybe there was something to those Venusian airship sightings after WWII

Thanks for the info. I’ve always found Venus to be incredibly beautiful but relatively uninteresting once the hellish stats were known—I do remember reading relatively early about the possibility of even life in the clouds.

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