brightness, planets and the naked eye

[padren]

If I was in orbit of Jupiter right now, looking at it with my own eyes, would the brightness be the same as the photos we see from spacecraft, or are those artifically brightened?

 

I half expect it to be a dim, near black dark orange, considering how far it is from the sun. On the other hand, its very bright when seen from Earth, though the dot of light we see is the entire surface reflecting in a single point.

 

 

So, in terms of brightness, what would Jupiter look like to the naked eye, from the height of an orbiting probe?

 

Would it be hauntingly dark with the odd mega-burst of lightening? Would electrical discharges be visible from that view point? Would it appear as bright as the probes' photos would indicate?

[[Tycho?]]

I dont think most of the pictures would be artificially brightened.

 

You could probably calculate this yourself if you were motivated enough, find luminosity of the sun, then with jupiter's distance and surface area, determine how much light hits it, then with its albedo find out how much is reflected off.

 

Or you could just assume the pics are good, since all the pics of Jupiter I've seen have been around the same brightness; if they were hightened artificially you would expect some to be brighter than others.

[insane_alien]

i think jupiter is at a kind of "sweet spot" the photos don't need to be darkened(like the moon or earth) and the photos don't need to be lightened or have very long exposure times (like uranus, neptune and pluto.)

[Jacques]

Jupiter is at 5.2 Astronomical Unit from the sun. The AU is the distance from earth to the sun. Light follow inverse square law so the sun intensity is 5.2^2 or 27 time fainther than on earth. Longer exposure and sensitive electronics for sure. An astronaut I think will see prety the samething. Our eyes can adapt to this reduced luminosity. Maybe color won't be as bright because our color receptor are less sensitive.

[tony873004]

As Jacques says, sunlight is 27 times fainter than on Earth. But that's still very bright. Consider that the sunlit ground is over 1000 times brighter than your living room at night with the lights turned on.

 

When you're outside on a bright sunny day, your pupils contract to their smallest size. They'd just open up a bit more, and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.