ASTR 1101 Chapter : HW5answers
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C. jupiter can only appear as gibbous or full. Anywhere in its orbit, jupiter will always show mostly its illuminated hemisphere, resulting in either gibbous or full phase. You can confirm this for yourself by making a drawing showing the. Earth in its orbit around the sun and jupiter with its sunward-illuminated hemisphere. Or you can see this easily by the following thought experiment" where the case is pushed to an extreme where the earth"s orbit puts it very close to the sun (relative to that of the outer planet). For the earth close to the sun, you can easily realize that what we can see will be almost exactly the illuminated hemisphere in all cases. The brightness of the planets depends on the square of their distance, so the greatest change in brightness will be for the planet with the greatest ratio of nearest-to-farthest distance.
