Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

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Bad Astronomy Goes Hollywood:
The Top-Ten Examples of
Bad Astronomy in
Major Motion Pictures
W hoosh!
Our Hero’s spaceship comes roaring out of a dense
asteroid field, banks hard to the left, and dodges laser
beams from the Dreaded Enemy, who have come from a distant
galaxy to steal all of Earth’s precious water. The Dreaded Enemy
tries to escape Earth’s gravity but is caught like a fly in amber. As
stars flash by, Our Hero gets a lock on them and fires! A huge ball
of light erupts, accompanied by an even faster expanding ring of
material as the Dreaded Enemy’s ship explodes. Yelling joyously,
Our Hero flies across the disk of the full Moon, with the Sun just
beyond.
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We’ve all seen this scene in any of a hundred interchangeable
science-fiction movies. It sounds like an exciting scene. But what’s
wrong with this picture?
Well, everything, actually.
A lot of science-fiction movies are good fiction but bad science.
Most writers have no problem sacrificing accuracy to make a good
plot, and astronomy is usually the first field with its head on the
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