Aug
Ganymede: The largest moon in our Solar System
From Wired:
What does the largest moon in the Solar System look like? Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has a surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges. Like Earth’s Moon, Ganymede keeps the same face towards its central planet, in this case Jupiter. In this historic and detailed image mosaic taken by the Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, the colors of this planet-sized moon have been enhanced to increase surface contrasts. The violet shades extending from the top and bottom are likely due to frost particles in Ganymede’s polar regions. Possible future missions to Jupiter are being proposed that can search Europa and Ganymede for deep oceans that may harbor elements thought important for supporting life.
Jul
Own your own slice of the moon
San Francisco-based artist Craig Dorety has a series of carvings that represent segments of the moon’s surface as found in the topograhical data from JAXA’s Kayuga mission.
(via Boing Boing)
May
How big are Mars, Earth, Neptune and Jupiter, really?
What if Mars, Earth, Neptune, and Jupiter were orbiting around us at the same distance as our moon? How big would they appear?
This nifty video answers exactly that by demonstrating the sheer size and scale of the aforementioned planets.
I’m keeping my eye on you, Jupiter.
May
Jupiter: Moons
The planet Jupiter’s four largest moons are called the Galilean satellites, after Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who observed them in 1610. The German astronomer Simon Marius claimed to have seen the moons around the same time, but he did not publish his observations and so Galileo is given the credit for their discovery. These large moons, named Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, are each distinctive worlds.
About Me
Hi there, I'm Jim: PhD student in the biological sciences, enthusiast, friendly neighbour, Australian.
