This is How The Sun Appears From Each Planet In Our Solar System

Our Solar System is a breathtakingly gorgeous environment. It’s a diverse area full of stunning sights and natural wonders, whether it’s the pockmarked volcanic surface of Mercury, the dusty crimson plains of Mars, the gorgeous rings of Saturn, or even the blues and viridians of our own Earth.

We’d be nothing without the Sun, and artist and illustrator Ron Miller’s series of genuinely gorgeous renderings of our local star – as viewed from each planet, even the wretched demoted Pluto – serve to remind you of that. He’s spent over 40 years painting the black reaches of space, both near and far, and has created the most realistic renderings of the Sun as seen from these distant worlds as conceivable.

“I’ve taken care not only to show the Sun correctly, but also the surfaces of the planets and satellites,” Miller told IFLScience.

Despite the fact that Pluto is 7.5 billion kilometers (4.7 billion miles) away from Earth at its farthest point, the Sun appears particularly brilliant. “While the Sun is smaller, it remains an enormously brilliant source of light,” Miller remarked. “The light levels on the surfaces around you [on Pluto] would be dusk-like, but the sun itself would be a tremendously bright – albeit little – object.”

The brightness of the Sun is proportional to the square of its relative distance from us, according to physical rules. So, if you are now half as close to the Sun as you were before, the perceived brightness will be a quarter of what it was. (1/2)2 Equals 1/4, see?

This means that the brightness of the Sun decreases drastically as you go away from it. The fact that it’s still brilliant by the time you get to Pluto is a wonderful monument to the enormous force of our nearest thermonuclear star furnace.

^{Mercury, which is 58 million kilometers (36 million miles) from the Sun}

Venus orbits the Sun at a distance of 108 million kilometers (67 million miles). The world is covered in pancake volcanism and a suffocating, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, as represented above.

^{Earth, which is 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) from the Sun. If you’ve ever seen a solar eclipse, this sight will be very familiar to you}

^{Mars, which is 228 million kilometers (142 million miles) from the Sun}

^{Jupiter (seen from the moon of Europa), which is 779 million kilometers (484 million miles) from the Sun}

^{Saturn, which is 1.43 billion kilometers (889 million miles) from the Sun}

^{Uranus (seen from the moon of Ariel) which is 2.88 billion kilometers (1.79 billion miles) from the Sun}

^{Neptune (seen from the moon of Triton), which is 4.5 billion kilometers (2.8 billion miles) from the Sun. Cryovolcanic geysers cloud the horizon}

^{Pluto, which has a highly elliptical orbit, is an average of 5.91 billion kilometers (3.67 billion miles) from the Sun}

^{All images in text: Ron Miller}