MPJ

Before we jump into premature conclusion with easy answers as 'nothing at all' or 'at least they are both orbiting the Sun' perhaps we could do some quick research for just in case... With equatorial radius of Jupiter almost thirty times bigger than the same property on Mercury, obvious composition difference between one gas giant and small rocky planet and all the other major difference in mass, density, temperature, orbital inclination, orbit period and with almost everything we could compare the two, it is very hard to find the slightest similarity. Not to say that Jupiter in its arsenal is in possession of moons equal or even bigger in size than the smallest planet of our Solar system. However within past couple of seasons, what they had in common was the fact that they were under the spotlight of all of us who from time to time enjoy gazing the sky with naked eyes or through modest telescopes with strong feeling of being the witnesses of our own Solar system ...

This is maybe the biggest optical illusion everybody has seen it. The Moon is huge on the horizon and couple of hours later it shrinks to it's 'normal' size. Of many hypotheses proposed, the one defined as 'apparent distance hypothesis' is the most accurate explanation - it's simply because we humans perceive the sky as a flat or gently curved than it is in reality. But you cannot fool the camera, cause of the simple fact that it does not have the brain and therefore if you fix  it on the tripod and take the image near the horizon and the one couple of hours later the Moon should be the same size. I always wanted to test this myself and finally my new Coolpix came with a feature of self taking images and I did it last night. Moonrise, HDR image created by Picturenaut So, in a nutshell, after couple of hours of shooting I took about 500 images (triggered every half a minute) and this is the result, maybe not so clear and perfect images, still this is n...