Help: Optics

From: Kevin (kschaaps_at_rebootstation.dyndns.org)
Date: 01/26/05 

Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 02:16:20 +0100

Greetings all,

I am in desperate need of some assistance, and I hoped there would be
someone here who would be willing to help me.

At the present time, I am working on designing a solar system. Fortunately
the basics are in fact quite simple. Now I am working on the moons
surrounding a planet. And I got a bit sidetracked.

I would like to find a way to calculate the optical size of an object (moon)
taken at a certain distance.

For instance:

Distance Planet to moon: 384.410 km
Diameter Moon: 3474 km
When PersonX looks at the Moon the diameter of the moon appears: 10cm.

I would like to find a way to calculate that 10cm.

The reason is that I'm creating an RPG game. In this game I would like to
give my players an idea of how large a stellar object appears. "The moon
looks huge" when it is very close, "it looks very small" when it is far
away.

I hope anyone would be willing to help me crack this thing.

In any case, Thanks a lot!!

Kevin