Solar System

Self-explanatory random thread. The target audience is ... me

Btw I've updated all my posts here (December 10, 2012), added links, pictures and videos. I spent lots of time, but it's all worth it! And now posts make more sense.

________________


Contents:

part 1: Neptune and Jupiter (Moons and Rings)

part 2: Mars

part 3: Saturn (Moons, Rings)

part 4: Uranus (Moons, Rings)

part 5: new images of Saturn

part 6: Io

part 7: Venus and part 7a

part 8: Titan

part 9: Mercury

part 10: Moon

part 11: Earth at night

part 12: Martian terrain
____________________

Neptune



Dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds, Neptune is the last of the hydrogen and helium gas giants in our Solar System. More than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth, the planet takes almost 165 Earth years to orbit our sun. In 2011 Neptune completed its first orbit since its discovery in 1846.



Planet profile.



This picture taken in 2011 shows planet's 16-hour rotation. The snapshots were taken at roughly four-hour intervals, offering a full view of the planet.



Infrared picture of Neptune and its moon Triton (lower right).



Rings of Neptune. Yes, it does have rings!



Triton's (Neptune's largest moon) surface.



Neptune and Triton
__________________________________

Jupiter - Largest Planet of the Solar System



Planet profile





True color image of Jupiter.


Big, fast, windy (footage from Voyager 1, 1979)


Jupiter Collision September 2012



Rings of Jupiter. So faint but so beautiful. Orange light lines are so sexy.



The comet or asteroid hit near Jupiter's South Pole. Impact happened in 2009.





Jupiter's Great Red Spot is an atmospheric storm that has been raging in Jupiter's southern Hemisphere for at least 400 years. About 100 years ago, the storm covered over 40 000 km of the surface. It is currently about one half of that size (twice the diameter of Earth) and seems to be shrinking. It is not known how long the spot will last, or whether the changes in size are a result of normal fluctuations.



Surface of Europa (Jupiter's moon). Looks like a map of some city lol. Scientists think that there can be an ocean of liquid water hidden beneath its icy surface, and maybe some primitive life.



That's Ganymede (Jupiter's moon), the Largest Moon in the Solar System. If Ganymede orbited the Sun, it would be considered a planet. It is larger than Mercury.



Callisto (Jupiter's moon). It's old and its surface is half rock and half ice. It has one of the largest impact craters in the Solar System, measuring about 4000 km across called Valhalla.

______________________________



It's amazing that scientists and engineers designed such amazing instruments like Voyager, Venera, Galileo, Cassini, Juno, Hubble, Kepler, Herschel, Huygens and many more. And it's so amazing that we have great and restless minds of scientists and thinkers. You rule. Forever and ever.

Part 2: Martian Terrain & Moons



Red planet's profile



Reull Vallis



A region close to Ma'adim Vallis, one of the largest canyons on Mars, finding craters, lava flows and tectonic features.



Araneiform channels



Tiu Valles



Argyre Planitia



Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the Solar System. Olympus Mons rises 24 km high and measures 550 km across. By comparison, Earth's largest volcano, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, rises 9 km high and measures 120 km across. Such large volcanoes can exist on Mars because of the low gravity and lack of surface tectonic motion.



Valles Marineris is the longest and deepest canyon in the Solar System. It is 4000 km long, 200 km wide, and up to 7 km deep. It runs along the Martian equator and covers nearly a quarter of the planet's circumference and 59% of its diameter.

Lol Mars is an extreme place. Earth's deepest canyons and highest mountains pale in comparison.

Many pictures of Martian craters, moons, fields and valleys can be found @ HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment).

Deimos and Phobos - Martian moons.





Nice video here: watch

Part 3 Moons of Saturn



Planet Profile


Don't forget to check this amazing video! All real footage. Made by Cassini spacecraft.



Saturn's rings close up



True color image.



Rings and moons of Saturn



That's Saturn's moon Anthe moving downward and to the right.



Mimas (Saturn's moon). In this view captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on 13 February 2010, Herschel Crater dominates Mimas, making the moon look like the Death Star in the movie "Star Wars." Herschel Crater is 130 km, or 80 miles, wide and covers most of the right of this image. Scientists continue to study this impact basin and its surrounding terrain.

And finally here you can see pictures of Saturn's moons. Enceladus, Rhea, Dione, Tethys (image taken on May 20, 2012), Methone (looks like an egg lol) and Pandora (looks like a potato).













____________________



Equatorial ridges

Equatorial ridges are a feature of at least three of Saturn's moons: Iapetus, Atlas and Pan. Ridges make Atlas and Pan look like an UFO lol.



This dramatic picture of the ridge was taken in 2007.


Valterne Mons - ridge that follows the equator of Saturn's moon Iapetus gives it the appearance of a giant walnut. The ridge is 100 km (62 miles) wide and at times 20 km (12 miles) high. (The peak of Mount Everest, by comparison, is 5.5 miles above sea level.) Scientists are debating how the ridge might have formed.



Truly a moon of mysteries, Iapetus also is stained with a dark material, particularly visible in this infrared image (taken in 2007), of unknown origin.




Saturn's moon Enceladus is a strange place. The cold, tiny moon in the far reaches of the solar system is an unlikely location for liquid water. Yet scientists have not only discovered that Enceladus contains water, it actually shoots magnificent plumes of it out into space. These plumes and their origin remain a major mystery for researchers studying the moon and its environment. Where is the source of their liquid water and what causes them to fire out into space?



Saturn's highly irregular moon Hyperion.

Part 4:

Uranus



True color image.



Uranus' tilt essentially has the planet orbiting the Sun on its side, the axis of its spin is nearly pointing at the Sun. (Ha, sounds like fun!)



Uranus is blue-green in color, the result of methane in its mostly hydrogen-helium atmosphere. The planet is often dubbed an ice giant, since 80% or more of its mass is made up of a fluid mix of water, methane, and ammonia ices. Unlike the other planets of the solar system, Uranus is tilted so far that it essentially orbits the sun on its side, with the axis of its spin nearly pointing at the star. This unusual orientation might be due to a collision with a planet-sized body soon after it was formed.



Uranus with its moon Ariel (white dot) and its shadow (black dot).



Uranus Ring System



Infrared image of Uranus. Miranda is to the upper left of Uranus, and Puck is a faint smudge to the upper right.




This is a crescent of Uranus.



Titania is Uranus' largest moon.



Oberon is the second largest moon of Uranus.



Umbriel is the darkest of Uranus' largest moons. It reflects only 16% of the light that strikes its surface. The process by which Umbriel's ancient cratered surface was darkened remains a mystery.



Ariel has the brightest surface of the five largest Uranian moons, but none of them reflect more than about a third of the sunlight that strikes them. This suggests that their surfaces have been darkened by a carbonaceous material.



Miranda is thought to consist mostly of roughly equal amounts of water ice and silicate rock. Unlike the other four main Uranian satellites, Miranda's orbit is slightly inclined.

Saturn's north polar vortex



Saturn's north polar hexagon and rings



These images were taken .. when? Today!

Io - Jupiter's moon.



BTW it has an active volcano, here's the picture of an ongoing eruption:



It looks like it's made of cheese





Volcanic plumes of gas spew sulfur dioxide hundreds of miles into space, as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft. Such activity accounts for a small chunk of the moon's immediate atmosphere, but eventually freezes and builds up a store of the material.





This first-ever complete map of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io released on March 19, 2012

Holy moley ...

mlee49 said:

You should organize your first post a bit, give it some structure.

Today I learned, Pandora is not just a box or an online radio source; it's an inner orbiting moon of Saturn. Thanks for the knowledge.

Click to expand...

Thanks for suggestion, mlee I edited and re-organized my posts. And I've added a picture of Pandora, a potato-shaped moon. This Saturn's moon was discovered in 1980, it's only 52 miles across.


__________



Venus - Brightest Planet in Solar System. Venus is brighter than any other planet or even any star in the night sky because of its highly reflective clouds and its closeness to our planet.

Venus and Earth are often called twins because they are similar in size, mass, density, composition and gravity. However, the similarities end there.
Venus takes 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis, (what a slow dog ) by far the slowest of any of the major planets.

Venus is the hottest world in the Solar System. Although Venus is not the planet closest to the sun, its dense atmosphere traps heat in a runaway version of the greenhouse effect that warms up the Earth. As a result, temperatures on Venus reach 870 degrees F (465 degrees C), more than hot enough to melt lead. Probes that scientists have landed there have survived only a few hours before getting destroyed. (lol, imagine what would happen to human then).

Venus has a hellish atmosphere as well, consisting mainly of carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid, and scientists have only detected trace amounts of water in the atmosphere. The atmosphere is heavier than that of any other planet, leading to a surface pressure 90 times that of Earth. (Damn, that place is hell: high temperatures, high pressure, acid clouds, CO2, lava You can find 1000 ways to die on Venus ).

Unfortunately I couldn't find any decent images of Venus only computer simulated shit and some radar crapola which I ain't gonna post



This is a real picture of Venus, taken by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter in 1979. Its thick atmosphere prevents any view of its surface, even from Venus orbit. So we can't see a thing. Meh ...



The image taken in 2007 shows the southern hemisphere of Venus.

And now let's see a picture of the surface

The only pictures ever returned from the surface of Venus were sent back by the Soviet Venera spacecraft. A number of early missions failed to survive the atmospheric pressure of Venus and were crushed before reaching the surface. Venera 11 and 12 landed but failed to transmit pictures. But Venera 9, 10, 13 and 14 survived to transmit pictures. Here are those epic pictures taken by Venera 13, 9 and 14:







That's fucking awesome. Why? Because environment temperature was 450 C and pressure was ... 90 atmospheres (equivalent to 900 meters of water).

It's obvious nobody's gonna send a rover there, that'd be a waste of time and money so these pictures is all we have.

Titan (Saturn's largest moon). Image taken with NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Sept. 25, 2008.

Titan's atmosphere is active and complex, and it is mainly composed of nitrogen (95%) and methane (5%). Titan also has a presence of organic molecules that contain carbon and hydrogen, and that often include oxygen and other elements similar to what is found in Earth's atmosphere and that are essential for life.

Surface Temperature: minus 290 Fahrenheit (minus 179 degrees Celsius), which makes water as hard as rocks and allows methane to be found in its liquid form. Because methane exists as a liquid, it also evaporates and forms clouds, which occasionally causes methane rain.

Titan's diameter is 50% larger than that of Earth's moon. It's larger than Mercury but is half the mass of Mercury. Its mass is mainly composed of water in the form of ice and rocky material.

There is an abundance of methane lakes, which are mainly concentrated near its southern pole.
Large areas of Titan's surface are covered with sand dunes made of hydrocarbon.

Titan's atmosphere extends around 370 miles high (about 600 km), which makes it a lot higher than Earth's atmosphere.

Possibilities for Life (in 6 billion years )

It is thought that conditions on Titan could become more habitable in the far future. If the sun increases its temperature (6 billion years from now) and becomes a red giant star, Titan's temperature could increase enough for stable oceans to exist on the surface, according to some models. If this happens, conditions in Titan could be similar to Earth's, allowing conditions favorable for some forms of life.

And now the most exciting part - Huygens probe. It is the most distant landing of any craft launched from Earth. It's hard to imagine that it sent data which travelled billion km to reach the Earth. So we could see the images of the surface.



It's a landing site.



Some rocks and stuff. It's the only image from the surface of a planetary body outside the inner Solar System. Fascinating, isn't it?





"Shoreline" panorama.

_______________________

Update: December 3, 2012

Last Thursday, November 29, Cassini sailed past Titan for yet another close encounter, coming within 603 miles of the cloud-covered moon in order to investigate its thick, complex atmosphere. So now we have brand new images of Titan



Titan's southern hemisphere



Titan's crescent from a distance of 193,460 km

Mercury



Planet Profile



Mosaic picture. Looks like our moon.

As the planet nearest the sun, the surface of Mercury can reach a scorching 840 degrees F (450 degrees C). However, since this world doesn't have a real atmosphere to entrap any heat, at night temperatures can plummet to minus 275 degrees F (minus 170 degrees C), a more than 1100 degrees F (600 degree C) temperature swing that is the greatest in the solar system.

Mercury is the smallest planet - it is only slightly larger than Earth's moon. It speeds around the sun every 88 Earth days, travelling through space at nearly 180000 km/h, faster than any other planet. 59 Earth days Mercury takes to rotate on its axis.

Mercury and Earth are the only planets in Solar System that possess a magnetic field.
Mercury's magnetic field is 1% the strength of Earth's.



Mercury's surface is full of sulfur.

Water Ice

And would you imagine that ... there's evidence for water ice, organic material at Mercury's poles. Water ice on Mercury, in areas of persistent shadow



The tilt of Mercury's rotational axis is almost zero, so there are pockets at the planet's poles that never see sunlight. Now the newest data from MESSENGER strongly indicate that water ice is the major constituent of Mercury's north polar deposits, that ice is exposed at the surface in the coldest of those deposits, but that the ice is buried beneath an unusually dark material across most of the deposits, areas where temperatures are a bit too warm for ice to be stable at the surface itself.



Caloris basin, image taken in 2008.



Giant impact crater on Mercury discovered in 2008.

More pics of Mercury here

Fleurious said:

If only they landed Curiosity near Valles Marineris, or in it!

Click to expand...

That'd be cool but Valles Marineris is too rocky. Landing and manoeuvring in such a dangerous place is ... hard.

All posts updated. Everyone who cares can check

________________

Part 10: Moon



Yeah our good ol Moon The Moon is pristine with no wind, erosion, or present geological activity. This means that lunar features are mainly <frozen> in time with nothing to disturb them



Tycho crater



Copernicus crater



Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains - lovely name )



Pythagoras crater



Aristarchus and Herodotus craters



Mare Moscoviense



Rowland crater



Mare Serenitatis



Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows)

Scientists unveiled today an unprecedented new look at our planet at night. A global composite image shows the glow of natural and human-built phenomena across the planet in greater detail than ever before.

Click to expand...

Amazing!

Most satellites are designed to observe Earth during the day – a time when they can observe our planet fully illuminated by the sun. NASA says that its new sensor, a Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite or (VIIRS), is sensitive enough to detect the nocturnal glow produced by Earth’s atmosphere and the light from a single ship in the sea.

Click to expand...

That's cool!



More and more.

Martian terrain part 2



Utopia Planitia, May 18, 1979. This color photo shows a thin coating of water ice on the rocks and soil. Another pictures of Utopia Planitia:



Ice frost





Utopia Planitia (Latin: "Nowhere Plain") is the largest recognized impact basin on Mars and in the Solar System with an estimated diameter of 3300 km.



Chryse Planitia, July 4, 1997



Charitum Montes



Amazonis Planitia



Isidis Planitia - a plain located inside a giant impact basin on Mars



Ice cap at the South Pole on Mars. This picture was shot from Mars orbit in 2000 by a spacecraft called Mars Global Surveyor. The white regions are ice. Most of the ice is water ice, but there is also a thinner layer of dry ice (frozen CO2) on top of the water ice. The ice cap is about 420 km (260 miles) across. It was summer in the southern part of Mars when this picture was taken. In the winter, the area shown in this picture is completely covered by dry ice.

New picture of Saturn released today Yeah, the Cassini team has done it again. It's the newest rarest glorious and gorgeous backlit view of Saturn.

The Cassini spacecraft was deliberately positioned within Saturn's shadow, and the cameras were turned toward Saturn and with the Sun behind the planet.

Click to expand...

True color real image Also captured in this image are two of Saturn's moons: Enceladus and Tethys. Both appear on the left side of the planet, below the rings. Enceladus is closer to the rings; Tethys is below and to the left.

3870x2 said:

Is there any reason why it looks like someone cut Saturn and pasted it an inch lower?

I bet if I read the article, I would find out...

Found out why:

Click to expand...

Almost all huge astronomical pictures are mosaics, when object is huge they need to cut and paste a lot (because of FOV, angle and so on). But I don't mind, they look fantastic anyway.


New image of Saturn's rings captured by Cassini

Surface of Mercury (new images recently taken by MESSENGER)

More pictures of Mercury



There's Tolkien crater on Mercury. Lol, I never knew.



Magritte crater. Looks like Mickey Mouse.



Atget crater



Boccaccio crater



Bek and Lermontov craters



Donne crater



South Pole of Mercury