Category: Solar System

From Destruction to Creation: Understanding Meteorite Impact Craters

Post author By Scientia
Post date June 14, 2021
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Barringer Crater aerial photo — Aerial photo of Barringer Crater which helped calculating the age of the Earth. Image: wikipedia. About 50,000 years ago, an asteroid hurled down from space to form Meteor Crater in Arizona: the Barringer Crater. Shards of that asteroid have been collected from the crater rim and named for the nearby Canyon Diablo. In 1953, the American geochemist Clair Cameron Patterson (June 2, 1922 – December 5, 1995) measured ratios of lead isotopes in samples that put tight constraints on Earth's age. The Canyon Diablo meteorite is important because it represents a class of meteorites with components that allow for more precise dating. Samples of the meteorite show a spread from 4.53 to 4.58 billion years. Scientists interpret this range as the time it took for the solar system to evolve, a gradual event that took place over approximately 50 million years. The age determined from the Canyon Diablo meteorite has been confirmed by hundreds of other age determinations, from both terrestrial samples and other meteorites.

Ever since the planets first formed, they have been bombarded with space rocks. Asteroid and cometary collisions are so powerful that planetary surfaces fracture and melt beneath them, leaving behind huge craters. These impact events have played an important role in our planet’s history, by shaping the geological landscape, producing valuable minerals, and affecting the evolution of life. Dr. Gordon “Oz” Osinski from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, aims to understand this fundamental process on Earth, Mars, and the Moon – with important implications for space exploration, mining, and understanding the origins of life.

Space Exploration Solar System

New Horizons Photographs Voyager 1’s Location

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date June 11, 2021
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On December 25, 2020, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft pointed its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager in the direction of its predecessor, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, and photographed its location from the Kuiper Belt. Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object and the first spacecraft to actually leave the solar system.

In fact, according to NASA, Voyager 1 itself is about 1 trillion times too faint to be visible in the image taken by New Horizons, its location is known precisely due to NASA’s radio-tracking (see: how far can Voyager 1 go before we lose contact?). As of April 2021, it is more than 152 astronomical units (AU, see notes 1) from the Sun.

Space Exploration Solar System

NASA has announced two missions to Venus by 2030 – here’s why that’s exciting

Post author By The Conversation
Post date June 7, 2021
No Comments on NASA has announced two missions to Venus by 2030 – here’s why that’s exciting

For decades, the exploration of our solar system left one of our neighbouring planets, Venus, largely unexplored. Now, things are about to change.

Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University

Solar System Planet Earth

Measuring Meteorites to Reveal the Origins of the Earth

Post author By Scientia
Post date June 2, 2021
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Near-Earth asteroid — Asteroid composition depends on where they were formed in the solar system. S- type asteroids, such as Ida, are mostly composed of silicate and nickel-iron and found in the inner asteroid belt. Image credit - NASA/JPL

The planet we call home has a 4.5-billion-year history, but humans have only been around for a tiny fraction of this time. To discover what happened before life arose on Earth, and even before Earth’s formation, scientists can study objects sent from space – from icy comets and rocky asteroids to tiny particles of interstellar dust. Early in Earth’s history, primordial gases became trapped deep in the planet’s interior. By determining how they were trapped and where they might be stored, Dr. Manfred Vogt and his research group at the Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg are shedding new light on Earth’s origins.

Solar System Education

Space Weather Underground: A Magnetometer Array with Educational Opportunities

Post author By Scientia
Post date May 9, 2021
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The complex processes of Earth’s ionosphere may occur far above the planet’s surface, but when monitored from numerous locations at sufficient distances, they can be measured using inexpensive equipment on the ground. Dr. Charles Smith at the University of New Hampshire has assembled an extensive team to do just that, with participants ranging from space scientists with decades of experience to high school students considering futures in science and engineering. Named Space Weather Underground, the project could soon make extensive data on ionosphere dynamics available to scientists and the public alike.

Solar System

How do we know if an asteroid headed Earth is dangerous?

Post author By Horizon Magazine
Post date May 4, 2021
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The Chicxulub impactor was an asteroid or comet at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter. Around 66 million years ago, it impacted a few miles from the present-day town of Chicxulub in Mexico, at around 64,000 kilometers per hour (40,000 mph). The impact has created a crater (Chicxulub crater) more than 180 km (110 miles) in diameter, making it the third largest known impact crater on Earth. Image credit: Joe Tucciarone/Science Photo Library

There are a lot of things that pose a threat to our planet – climate change, natural disasters, and solar flares, for example. But one threat in particular often captures the public imagination, finding itself popularized in books and films and regularly generating alarming headlines: asteroids.

by Jonathan O’Callaghan

Solar System Astronomy

The oldest footage of a Solar Eclipse (1900)

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date April 30, 2021
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This oldest footage of a solar eclipse was filmed on 28 May 1900, by the famous British magician and inventor Nevil Maskelyne (1863-1924).

The footage has been restored and released online by the BFI channel.

Solar System

10 Amazing Moon Facts

The supermoon over the Dutch Caribbean, 50 miles north of Venezuela, November 15, 2016. Image: Betty Wills The Moon follows an elliptic orbit around Earth. Naturally, sometimes it gets closer to the Earth than the other times. When it's also full moon at its closest point to the Earth, it's called Supermoon. As a result, the moon appears larger and brighter than usual in the sky.

Earth has got only one moon – a rocky, cratered place, about a quarter the size of Earth and an average of 384,400 kilometers (238,855 miles) away. It is simply called – well, “the Moon” because people didn’t know other moons around other planets existed until Galileo Galilei discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610. Here are 10 amazing moon facts.

Solar System Astronomy

Here’s how scientists planning to deflect asteroids that might damage Earth

Post author By Horizon Magazine
Post date April 10, 2021
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Two asteroids passing Earth — Two Near-Earth Objects (in this case, two asteroids) passing Earth. An ESA image, published in the "Space in Images" series by the European Space Agency. A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit can bring it into proximity with Earth. By definition, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU, roughly the distance between the Earth and the Sun, which was defined exactly as 149,597,870,700 meters or about 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles since 2012). If a NEO's orbit crosses the Earth's and the object is larger than 140 meters (460 ft) across, it is considered a potentially hazardous object (PHO). Most known PHOs and NEOs are asteroids.

Asteroids – the bits and pieces left over from the formation of the inner planets – are a source of great curiosity for those keen to learn about the building blocks of our solar system, and to probe the chemistry of life.

Humans are also considering mining asteroids for metals, but one of the crucial reasons scientists study this ancient space rubble is planetary defense, given the potential for space debris to cause Earth harm.

Astronomy Solar System

A simple guide to buying your first telescope

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date January 4, 2021
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You decided to buy your first telescope, but don’t know where to start? Here’s a simple guide for you.