Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known
Founder: Joseph Barone
Contributors: crookedindifference, bumerangue, propagandery, rocketmagic, rostenbach
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
What the hell is happening on the Sun?
In less than 24 hours, the Sun has unleashed a trio of X-Class solar flares. They are the first, second and third X-class eruptions of 2013, making them the most powerful of the year by a substantial margin. What’s more, each burst has been more violent than the last. So uhh… what the hell is going on here?
Isostasy, gravity, and the Moon! Last week the GRAIL lunar gravity mission published their first scientific results, and what they have found will send many geophysicists back to the drawing board to explain how the Moon formed and why it looks the way it does now.
Here’s an explainer of the first results from GRAIL.
Source: The Planetary Society Facebook page.
Discovery News chats with Caltech astronomer Mike Brown about the recent discovery of a fifth moon orbiting Pluto:
“It’s a really good reminder that you don’t have to be a planet to be interesting.”
This diagram shows the approximate relative sizes of the terrestrial planets, from left to right: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Distances are not to scale. A terrestrial planet is a planet that is primarily composed of silicate rocks. The term is derived from the Latin word for Earth, “Terra”, so an alternate definition would be that these are planets which are, in some notable fashion, “Earth-like”. Terrestrial planets are substantially different from gas giants, which might not have solid surfaces and are composed mostly of some combination of hydrogen, helium, and water existing in various physical states. Terrestrial planets all have roughly the same structure: a central metallic core, mostly iron, with a surrounding silicate mantle. Terrestrial planets have canyons, craters, mountains, volcanoes and secondary atmospheres.
“Neptune was discovered one Neptune year ago. On September 23, 1846 Neptune was seen near its predicted location, with the discovery credited to Johann Galle, John Couch Adams, and Urbain Le Verrier. On Jul 7, 2011 Neptune completed its first orbit around the Sun since that day. Neptune is far from the Sun and very cold.”
Source: NASA SDO Facebook page.
Pluto's icy exterior may conceal an ocean
PLUTO could hide a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell. Indeed, other bodies on the solar system’s frigid fringe could also harbour subsurface oceans, and these could provide the conditions to sustain life.
Cassini Presents Saturn Moon Quintet
With the artistry of a magazine cover shoot, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this portrait of five of Saturn’s moons poised along the planet’s rings. From left to right are Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and finally Rhea, bisected by the right side of the frame. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 684,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Rhea and 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Enceladus. The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 29, 2011. Image scale is about 4 miles (7 kilometers) per pixel on Rhea and 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel on Enceladus.
Composite of two images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft of Saturn’s moons Titan (left) and Dione (right).
Image credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/Space Science Institute
For more information about Titan, click here: http://solarsystem.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Sat_Titan and for more information about Dione, click here: http://solarsystem.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Sat_Dione
Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover Animation
This 11-minute animation depicts key events of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will launch in late 2011 and land a rover, Curiosity, on Mars in August 2012.
NASA’s Hubble Discovers Another Moon Around Pluto
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite - temporarily designated P4 - was uncovered in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet.
The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km).
Voyager Finds Magnetic Foam at Solar System’s Edge
The Voyager satellites are now traveling through the outer edge of the solar system, called the heliosheath. Using a computer model based on Voyager data, scientists have shown that the sun’s magnetic field becomes bubbly in this region due to reconnection. Because of this, cosmic rays must slowly work their way through the magnetic foam before continuing on toward the sun.
Source: NASA.
CONFIRMED! JUPITER WAS SHOT WITH AN ASTEROID
On July 19, 2009, 15 years (to the day) after the famous comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 peppered Jupiter with huge chunks of ice, the gas giant was hit once again by a cosmic bullet.
Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley was the first to notice a scar in the planet’s atmosphere after the fact, leading us to believe that Jupiter had been hit by another comet.
However, in this cosmic game of whodunit, jumping to the conclusion that “another” comet was to blame for the 2009 impact turns out to have been a red herring. Just because we know a comet slammed into the planet in 1994, it doesn’t necessarily mean the 2009 event used the same weapon.
After some detective work, two papers recently published in the journal Icarus have concluded that Jupiter was actually shot by an asteroid, not a comet.
Hubble Harvests Distant Solar System Objects
Beyond the orbit of Neptune reside countless icy rocks known as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). One of the biggest, Pluto, is classified as a dwarf planet. The region also supplies us with comets such as famous Comet Halley. Most TNOs are small and receive little sunlight, making them faint and difficult to spot.
Saturn’s Rings May Be Remains of Ripped-Apart Moon
Saturn’s famous rings are the last remaining shards of a huge moon the planet tore apart long ago, a new study suggests.
A moon about the size of Titan — Saturn’s largest satellite — likely spiraled into the giant planet about 4.5 billion years ago, scientists think. As it made its way, Saturn’s powerful gravity stripped off the doomed moon’s icy outer layers, thus spawning the planet’s magnificent rings, according to the research.
