Crazy Image Shows What North America Would Look Like On Jupiter

[Buster's Uncle]

Crazy Image Shows What North America Would Look Like On Jupiter
Business Insider
By Jessica Orwig  11 minutes ago



John Brady/Astronomy Central



Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, but just how large is it?

Well, you could easily fit all of the moons and every other planet in the solar system inside of Jupiter and still have plenty of room left over. Or to put it another way, you could stuff more than 1,000 Earths inside. Moreover, this giant gas planet has a diameter of over ten times that of Earth.

But none of these facts are as revealing as the image above, produced by John Brady for Astronomy Central.

That small, floating, green island just beneath Jupiter's Great Red Spot, is not a satellite or moon. It is the true-sized continent of North America.

Brady, who is an amateur astronomer and founder and writer for Astronomy Central, superimposed North America onto the face of Jupiter to give us a humbling perspective of just how large Jupiter is, or just how tiny we are, depending on how you look at it.

The famous Great Red Spot is an enormous storm that scientists estimate is between 300 and 400 years old.

This image is to scale meaning this is exactly what North America would look like if on Jupiter. To compare, here's an image of North America on Earth:

 

Wikimedia Commons


And what Jupiter looks like compared to the rest of the solar system:



Flickr/image editor


http://news.yahoo.com/crazy-image-shows-north-america-181955413.html

[Geo]

Too bad there's not a single moon of Jupiter put to scale on the picture. We could compare the size of North America with Jupiters' moons then.

[Lord Avalon]

Per Wikipedia Jupiter has an equatorial radius of 71,492 +/- 4 km, or 11.209 Earths. Its largest moon, Ganymede, has a mean radius of 2,634.1 +/- 0.3 km, or 0.413 Earths. The continental US is 4500 km east to west at its widest, or about 0.71 Earths.