aurumae t1_jdppk9t wrote
Reply to comment by portmantuwed in [NASA on Twitter] Newly-discovered asteroid 2023 DZ2 will pass Earth more than 100,000 miles (161,000 km) away–about half the distance to the Moon–making its close approach at 3:51 p.m. EDT (12:51 p.m. PDT) by ICumCoffee
My point was to illustrate that even though the moon is the closest thing to us in space the distances are still vast compared to the sizes of the planets themselves. The Earth and moon are often depicted as being practically on top of each other, but the distance between them is two orders of magnitude greater than the size of either body. Like I said the distance is so big that you could fit all the planets in the solar system between the Earth and the moon (though as someone pointed out, only at apogee). Of course, since the moon is the closest thing to us, other distances are going to be much more impressive, but the fact that you could drop a great big giant thing like Jupiter in between the Earth and the moon and for it not even to be a tight fit I found really helped me to get a sense of the distance.
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