Wednesday, March 14, 2012

The important questions that need answering

Could you build a minifig scale Death Star? [Link]
Just when you thought everything was over, it keeps going. What if this Lego set were indeed in orbit around the Earth? Low Earth orbit (with an altitude of 300 km). What would it look like? Well, first let me say that the angular size of the the moon is about 0.53 degrees. If this 3.52 km diameter radius object was in orbit, it would have an angular size of:
So, it would appear bigger than the actual real moon. You know I am going to make a diagram showing that. Here it is.
How cool would that be? People would mistake it for a moon, just like Han Solo did.  Well, it look just like the moon except that it would just take a couple of minutes to pass across the sky where the moon doesn’t really seem to change its position.
That's no moon. It's bigger.

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