Extraterrestrial Skies - Asteroids

Asteroids

The asteroid belt is sparsely populated and most asteroids are very small, so that an observer situated on one asteroid would be unlikely to be able to see another without the aid of a telescope. Occasional "close approaches" do occur, but these are spread out over eons. One movie to accurately show this is 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Some asteroids that cross the orbits of planets may occasionally get close enough to a planet or asteroid so that an observer from that asteroid can make out the disc of the nearby object without the aid of binoculars or a telescope. For example, in September 2004, 4179 Toutatis came about four times the distance from the Earth that the Moon does. At the closest point in its encounter, the Earth would have appeared about the same size as the Moon appears from Earth. The Moon would also be easily visible as a small shape in Toutatis's sky at that time.

Asteroids with unusual orbits also offer a lot to the imagination. For instance, the asteroid (or more likely, extinct comet) 3200 Phaethon has one of the most eccentric orbits: its distance from the Sun varies between 0.14 and 2.4 AU. At perihelion, the Sun would loom over 7 times larger than it does in our sky, and blast the surface with over 50 times as much energy; at aphelion, the Sun would shrink to less than half its apparent diameter on Earth, and give little more than a sixth as much illumination.