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William Herschell's Observations about Sunspots and the Inhabitants of the Sun.

 Italian illustrator and printmaker, Leopoldo Galluzzo, for his book  Altre scoverte fatte nella luna dal Sigr. Herschel  (Other discoveries made ​​on the moon from Mr. Herschel). The correlation between solar-activity and weather patterns across the world ought to be so self-evident to us, that the sun drives the weather, that an abundance of ‘the sun’ makes hot weather and that when the sun is occluded by clouds or the land less exposed during the winter seasons, then we get colder weather, and likewise it ought to be obvious that the strength of solar activity and the nature and strength of its radiations, will affect the weather and climate on all the bodies of the solar-system.  Solar-activity and the sun-earth magnetic relationship for example has been implicated by some meteorologists, such as Piers Corbyn, as being the primary driver of Earth climate, though at present there is a contrary viewpoint which seems to predominate that it is human activity whi...
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What is the closest planet to Earth?



 You probably got it wrong....

This is a perfect example of how the mental model of the solar-system which has been taught to us since we were children bears almost no relationship to the actual reality. Not only is Mercury effectively the closest planet to our own but it is also the closest planet to every planet in the solar system.

You have been taught or told, that the closest planet to Jupiter is Saturn. Whenever we see a diagram of the solar-system, this is what we see. We see the planets all laid out in order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. All very nicely bunched together and sat next to each other for our convenience. This situation is completely and entirely wrong and can literally never happen.

 Mercury’s relatively rapid orbit around the sun compared with the much slower longer orbits of all the other planets, take them much further away from each other, in fact neighbouring planets as per the science textbook illustrations are only neighbours for the very shortest time period during which they draw together on the orbital plane before the inner neighbour is again pulled away going further and further away on its far journey behind the sun. So, if we observe this real-life simulation we find much to our surprise perhaps, that not only are orbital neighbour planets on average much closer to Mercury for much longer than their own orbital neighbours, but that Mercury is in reality, on average, the closest neighbour to all planets of our solar-system.

Anyway, that’s something you can puzzle and annoy your friends and family with when you go home. You can hours of fun with it. 

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