Planetary Science
A Blog about the bodies in our Solar System
Before it’s too late, here’s this week’s 3D Thursday Anaglyph! If you’ve been following NASA’s Mars Rover, Opportunity, then you know that it just rolled up to giant Endeavor Crater a few weeks ago! This is a picture on the rim of the crater. To the left is a small crater, in the center is Tisdale 2, the first Breccia studied on Mars by a rover, and in the distance is Endeavor Crater. Think this is cool? You have to check out the full panorama here. It feels like you’re on Mars, but you know, a lot warmer.

Before it’s too late, here’s this week’s 3D Thursday Anaglyph!

If you’ve been following NASA’s Mars Rover, Opportunity, then you know that it just rolled up to giant Endeavor Crater a few weeks ago! This is a picture on the rim of the crater. To the left is a small crater, in the center is Tisdale 2, the first Breccia studied on Mars by a rover, and in the distance is Endeavor Crater.

Think this is cool? You have to check out the full panorama here. It feels like you’re on Mars, but you know, a lot warmer.

ianbrooks:

Curiosity as Art

Gettin’ its ass to Mars in 2012, the intrepid and let’s all be honest here guys, downright sexy Mars Rover has inspired a few fans. From Curiosity’s official Facebook page: “The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a geological explorer headed for the surface of Mars, takes a new turn as an artistic muse, thanks to mission fans”.

(via: Boing Boing)

The second image here shows Venus’s south polar vortex, a giant permanent vortex in her acid-cloud atmosphere. The pictures were taken with infrared light, the only light we can use to see inside the thick clouds of Venus. As the vortex gets darker in each image, it’s getting hotter, which also means it’s getting lower in the atmosphere. At the bottom of the picture its about -20 degrees C, and about 65 km above the surface of Venus.

(This makes it one of the more pleasant places to be if you take a vacation there!)

(Image Credit: ESA/VIRTIS/INAF-IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA)

Scientists using the ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory have just found where the water and oxygen in Saturn’s upper atmosphere comes from: it’s geyser-moon Enceladus! The epic geysers on Enceladus are known to blast lots of water into space, but now we know that that water forms a giant taurus around Saturn. While most of the water-ice is turned into hydrogen and elemental oxygen in space, some of it makes its way to Saturn’s upper atmosphere. For over a decade we’ve known Saturn to have oxygen and water in his upper atmosphere, but we’ve had NO IDEA HOW. Until now! Read more at the European Space Agency’s website! Or read the article Direct Detection of the Enceladus Water Torus with Herschel in Astronomy & Astrophysics!

Scientists using the ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory have just found where the water and oxygen in Saturn’s upper atmosphere comes from: it’s geyser-moon Enceladus!

The epic geysers on Enceladus are known to blast lots of water into space, but now we know that that water forms a giant taurus around Saturn. While most of the water-ice is turned into hydrogen and elemental oxygen in space, some of it makes its way to Saturn’s upper atmosphere. For over a decade we’ve known Saturn to have oxygen and water in his upper atmosphere, but we’ve had NO IDEA HOW. Until now!

Read more at the European Space Agency’s website! Or read the article Direct Detection of the Enceladus Water Torus with Herschel in Astronomy & Astrophysics!

spacerules: commondense: Why we should get out of the city every once in a while. Light pollution is robbing us of dark skies.

spacerules:

commondense:

Why we should get out of the city every once in a while.

Light pollution is robbing us of dark skies.

(via itsfullofstars)

It’s 3D Thursday again! These tiny volcanic vents on Mars were captured by the HiRISE camera. They sit on larger lava flows, which makes me think they might be rootless cones, caused when lava hits a chunk of ice and explodes. But that is very speculative. Regardless of what they are, they look cool. And kind of like barnacles! Check this link out for the whole HiRISE picture!

It’s 3D Thursday again!

These tiny volcanic vents on Mars were captured by the HiRISE camera. They sit on larger lava flows, which makes me think they might be rootless cones, caused when lava hits a chunk of ice and explodes. But that is very speculative. Regardless of what they are, they look cool. And kind of like barnacles!

Check this link out for the whole HiRISE picture!

Next time you see a hole in the ground and wonder “hmm, I wonder if this is from a meteorite impact?” keep this in mind! An impact produces ejecta, which fans out from the impact crater. If there is ejecta that flew into position and made a thin blanket of material around the crater, it’s probably not a worm hole, an ant hill, a volcano, or a hole caused by the collapse of underlying rock. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft figured out that this crater on giant asteroid, Vesta, was definitely caused by an impact because of the fan of material, shown here in “red,” that was ejected from the crater!

Next time you see a hole in the ground and wonder “hmm, I wonder if this is from a meteorite impact?” keep this in mind! An impact produces ejecta, which fans out from the impact crater. If there is ejecta that flew into position and made a thin blanket of material around the crater, it’s probably not a worm hole, an ant hill, a volcano, or a hole caused by the collapse of underlying rock.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft figured out that this crater on giant asteroid, Vesta, was definitely caused by an impact because of the fan of material, shown here in “red,” that was ejected from the crater!

NASA’s Opportunity Rover on Mars is taking a look at another rock on the rim of Endeavor Crater. This one is called Chester Lake. Chester Lake is Bedrock on Mars! Bedrock is important. So far Opportunity has been looking at soil and rocks in the soil that have been moved over time. At the beginning of this month, Opportunity saw the first Breccia rock on Mars, called Tisdale 2, but even this boulder was moved by a meteorite impact. This is not so for Chester Lake. Chester Lake is thought to be some old bedrock, around 3.5-4 billion years old! It is also a breccia, which is a rock that forms when smaller rock shards are lithified into a sort of giant-grained sandstone. Opportunity is going to drill into Chester Lake to look for signs that there was water around when it formed! (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU)

NASA’s Opportunity Rover on Mars is taking a look at another rock on the rim of Endeavor Crater. This one is called Chester Lake. Chester Lake is Bedrock on Mars!

Bedrock is important. So far Opportunity has been looking at soil and rocks in the soil that have been moved over time. At the beginning of this month, Opportunity saw the first Breccia rock on Mars, called Tisdale 2, but even this boulder was moved by a meteorite impact.

This is not so for Chester Lake. Chester Lake is thought to be some old bedrock, around 3.5-4 billion years old! It is also a breccia, which is a rock that forms when smaller rock shards are lithified into a sort of giant-grained sandstone. Opportunity is going to drill into Chester Lake to look for signs that there was water around when it formed!

(Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU)