I think the gas giants should be their own class of planets, no? Kick them out of the Earth/Venus/Mercury/Mars Club and give them their own place to play! But I digress. My first reaction seeing gas or other giant planets in the sky like in this art is that the tides would be enormous, but I never thought about the tidal locking. Would this cause the locked planet to bulge significantly? Its orbital period would have to be rather short in order to have the seasons implied by the image, no?

I need to do some reading.

I haven’t chosen any astronomy-related themes so far (though my 2011 calendar includes a couple of aurorae pics), but I will, inevitably. There are just so many themes to choose from. I’ll be choosing my 2013 calendar soon — traditionally I do that in early November.

Dan Durda’s calendar looks worthy, and is a theme I would consider. But I’m still going to browse the local shops. (One disadvantage of Internet-ordered calendars is that they tend not to have Australian public holidays marked.)

Oh, and I’ll probably share the link to the calendar on my Facebook page.

The foreground of that image is a scene from New Zealand, I’d bet money on it!

You have some weird plants in NZ, then!

The only reason Io has such a large amount of volcanism is because of the other satellites flexing it. If it wasn’t for Castillo, Europa and Ganymede, Io would probably be pretty boring.

Erm . . . according to nineplanets.org, this is not quite right. It seems that Europa and Ganymede cause Io to “wobble” in its orbit, which results in very large Jovian tides. But the tidal force comes from Jupiter, not from Europa or Ganymede. Callisto, it seems, does not get to play in this game.

Yeah, been listening to “The Sky is Calling” a bit much lately!

I hope a local store here in Phoenix carries these! Definately something I’d want!

If not, I’ll settle for kittens….

All these worlds are belong to us, except Europa, which has 28 days.

It goes something like that, right?

Yes, except in a leap year.

The foreground of that image is a scene from New Zealand, I’d bet money on it!

I’ve seen scenery exactly like that in the Alps in Austria. And I suspect you could find similar in the Rockies, or lots of other mountain ranges.

As for those brown-green things, they make much more sense as people (or animals) than as plants, in an area looking like that. Any actual plants I’d expect to be very small. Like the grass or moss where they are standing. Look at the distant mountains: pretty bare of any vegetation.

It really removes some the the alienness of it.

The vivid an image of the near horizons in the Red Mars series has left me longing for that imagery.

@7. Muz – October 25th, 2012 at 9:09 pm : Funny, don’t remember New Zealand / Aotearoa having a gas giant world with rings and moon(s?) in its sky – you saying Kiwis are literally from another planet?

Those have to be largest and weirdest looking Scotch thistle flowers I’ve ever seen too!

Looks like a superluminously awesome calendar – love that sort of imaginative spaceart. 8)