Popular Mechanics summarizes how our knowledge of planets in the Solar System has changed over the last 30 years of space exploration.
Tags : Every space probe ever launched, all on one map of the Solar System.
Heat wave: Temps on distant planet climb 1200 degrees in just hours
So we've been stuck in the deep freeze in Minnesota for a while. I'm ready to go to HD80606b. You haven't heard of it? It's a newly discovered planet that has hot weather. Extremely hot weather that can climb by 1,200 degrees in just hours. Read more about it here. Now where did I put my sunscreen?
If you were sad to see Pluto stripped of its planetary status, you can be glad that the poor mass of rock and ice has been given a break. The international body that officially defines the names of stellar objects has decided to call all objects like Pluto, plutoids. So if Pluto isn't a planet, what is it? It's a plutoid...so is Eris.
NASA Science website is an awesome resource
NASA Science website
Courtesy NASA To show how useful this site can be, here are links to pages I found as I dug deeper into just one of the many areas on the NASA Science website.
Science for different levels of learning
The NASA Science website provides learning opportunities for four learning groups.
Earth, sun, planets, and astrophysics
The NASA Science website is divided into these parts.
Planet Waterslide: A digital reconstruction of "the most fun planet."
Courtesy **Mary**There was a brief period in the history of the solar system about 3.9 billion years ago characterized by wayward space particles pelting the inner planets. The period is referred to as the Late Heavy Bombardment, and the moon still bears the crater scars of the repeated impacts (Earth was similarly battered, but the constant recycling of the crust has erased the craters).
The prevailing theory behind the LHB has long been that early reshuffling of the planets was responsible – specifically that a rebellious young Neptune moved further out from the sun (perhaps seeking a place of its own) and disturbed rocky bodies in the Kuiper Belt, causing them to “veer into the inner solar system.”
Recently, an astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC has provided compelling evidence that a migrating Neptune may not have been the cause after all. He thinks that the impact craters on the moon more closely match asteroids from the Asteroid Belt just beyond Mars, and that these asteroids were sent there by a disturbed orbit of a fifth rocky planet (the other rocky planets being, of course, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars).
The planet, dubbed Planet V, would probably have been bigger than the moon, but slightly smaller than Mars. The Carnegie scientist even developed a computer model detailing how Mars’ gravity could have upset V’s orbit, causing it to fall into the sun, passing through the Asteroid Belt and scattering asteroids on its way.
The theory obviously requires extensive testing before it can be accepted with any confidence, but, so far, it has passed the test of whether or not I like it. I do like it.
I’m not terribly attached to the name, though. “V” is okay, I supposed, but it’s been done. I was thinking that something along the lines of “Planet Waterslide” would be better, not only because it sounds fun, but because it more accurately describes the character of the planet as suggested by my own theories. See, I predict that further research will reveal that “V” was covered in waterslides, and inhabited solely by kittens and friendly dinosaurs (neither of whom, ironically, ever used the waterslides). Planet Waterslide was the destiny of mankind, the universe’s reward for our inevitable achievement of interplanetary travel. Unfortunately, jealous Mars, not as brave as his big brother Neptune, and who never moved out of the parents’ basement of the solar system, tricked, or possibly tripped, its little brother Waterslide.
From this point, the Carnegie theory pretty much takes over. Except that the asteroid craters on the moon, should they receive further study, will no doubt prove to be interspersed with much smaller, fluffier craters.
Sky spy: This new device -- the SkyScout -- uses GPS to take all the guess work out of astronomy. Point the videocamera-sized unit at light in the heavens and it wiil identify what it is. (Photo from Celestron)Looking for that special gift for the astronomer who has everything?
Have you heard about SkyScout? It’s a nifty new tool that costs about $400 but makes identifying things you spot in the heavens a lot easier.
About the size of video camera, the unit made by Celestron can help you identify a particular light you’re seeing in the sky. Or, you can punch in key data and have scan the skies so you can find a particular star or planet.
How does it work?
When you turn on the unit, SkyScout’s global positioning systems first work to identify where you’re at and what day and time it is. By placing the object you want to identify at the center of its concentric circle viewing scope, it then reads landmark stars and objects in the sky to zero in on the item you’re interested in. An audio option can be turned on so that SkyScout will verbally tell you what you’re looking at.
On the flip side, if you want to find Venus, let’s say, you’d simply click on that celestial body on the SkyScout’s menu. Arrows in the viewfinder will guide to move SkyScout in the right directions to that you ultimately get it in your sights. SkyScout has a database of 6,000 heavenly bodies to search out that way.
A Star-Tribune story that ran over the weekend about the unit said that one local astronomy store – Radio City in Moundsview – can’t keep the units on the shelf. And a competitor product, MySky, has just entered the market.
What do you think of this new application of GPS? Have you tried a SkyScout or MySky? Share your thoughts here with other Science Buzz readers.
This new device -- the SkyScout -- uses GPS to take all the guess work out of astronomy. Point the videocamera-sized unit at light in the heavens and it wiil identify what it is. (Photo from Celestron)
Please contact us if you have questions about the rights on this image.
At the Science Museum of Minnesota you can ask our featured Scientist on the Spot a question either using a computer interface or the old fashioned way – with a paper and pencil. Some of the handwritten questions veer a little off topic. But they are still good questions, and deserve answers. So here’s a question that was a little off topic for Noelle Beckman: “Can you tell me about Jupiter?”. Noelle is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota who studies how animals influence the make-up of tropical forests. So, I’ll take this one.
Jupiter: Image courtesy NASA.Jupiter is the largest of the eight planets in our solar system (remember, poor Pluto is no longer considered a planet). Jupiter is a gas giant, meaning it is primarily made up of hydrogen (90%) and helium (10%) gases. Jupiter probably has a rocky or metallic core, though we don’t know that for certain.
Jupiter is huge – really, tremendously big. Not as big as the Sun, but bigger than all the planets (even including Pluto) combined.
The Great Red Spot: Image courtesy NASA.When you look at the picture of Jupiter above, you can see that Jupiter’s atmosphere is banded – this banding is typical of gas giants (see pictures of the other gas giants in our solar system, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, to see similar banding). The bands are the result of extremely fast winds (more than 400 miles per hour) that are blowing in opposite directions for each adjacent band. The interaction of these bands result in storms – and one of Jupiter’s storms, called the Great Red Spot, has been known to exist since the seventeenth century.
Several NASA spacecraft have visited Jupiter, including Pioneers 10 & 11, Voyagers 1& 2, Galileo, New Horizons, Cassini-Huygens (on its way to Saturn), Ulysses (which used Jupiter in gravity-assist maneuver) – and probably others I was not able to dig up.
Jupiter has many moons – from what I can tell the current count is 63 – 47 of them are smaller than 10 kilometers in diameter. The four best known moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
What else can I tell you? The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter in 1994. You can see Jupiter in the night sky right now (in the southern sky during twilight and lower in the southwest after dark). Jupiter was named after the Roman god, Jupiter, who was very similar to Zeus in the Greek pantheon. In Pompeii there was a temple to Jupiter at the north end of the forum. Jupiter has faint planetary rings, like Saturn.
I hope this answers this person’s question. See, I can tell you about Jupiter!
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