The Strange Appeal Of Alien Skies

Does anyone else REALLY like the kind of sci-fi/fantasy skyscape that has a really big planetary body in it, like this?

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I noticed the same idea in an ad yesterday on TV, for some game (Destiny? I think) and I realised, I’ve always really liked that exact kind of thing, far more than skies with realistically-sized moons, stars or nebulae or whatever. The top search results in Google Image Search for “alien planet” have that same format, as well - huge planet hulking over the horizon, so it must be pretty popular.

I imagine the only way you’d get that would be to be on a moon orbiting a gas giant, otherwise the gravity - mass? - some phsyics stuff, anyway :slight_smile: would crash the two together.

I wonder if we evolved there? (Cue Twilight Zone music… :slight_smile: )

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stetically I like those alien skyes, but imagine the effects those giant moons could have on our bodies (I wonder if that would affect us sexually, we’d become hipersexual humans… erm… so where is the closest planet with a giant moon? >:D)

i like them very much.fiction or not they are beautiful.



The video game skyrim has something like that. Me and a friend of mine where talking about his the other day on how cool it would be.

Some of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter may have (or have had) water and may support life, it’s even marginally possible there’s some form of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa, anyway that set-up, of a small moon orbiting a huge gas giant, would be the one to look for - this is a Nasa artist’s portrayal of the view from the surface of Europa, with a cutaway to show the underground oceans they speculate may exist on that moon:

And this is a more artistic and speculative piece of the view from Saturn’s moon Titan, though I’m not sure how far they went to make the proportions absolutely accurate, and not sure if the moon was ever able to support an atmosphere:

All that stuff about whether Saturn was our original “black sun” means this would be the original sky for all of us, I’m not saying I believe that :slight_smile: but that type of image does seem quite compelling, with no real reason why - if our moon ever looked that huge in the sky, or our sun for that matter, it would be shit-your-pants time!

Hmm, i remember that in some of my dreams … moons are extremely large, and there are sometimes several.