“Most of what shaped the formation history of the solar system, and the planets and asteroids and all that, a lot of that happened within the first 5 to 10 million years,” she said. “Being able to actually pinpoint to within something like 2 million years what the age of the solar system is does make a difference in terms of trying to resolve the sequence of events that happened subsequently.”
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Cassini has shot some amazing new photos of Saturn this summer. This one gives you an amazing look at the atmosphere of Saturn, which is composed of hydrogen and small amounts of helium and methane. Wind speeds on Saturn’s surface can reach speeds up to 1,100 miles per hour. Lightning storms on Saturn? You bet
Saturn has many moons (62!) and this photo, taken by the amazing Cassini, is of the moon Enceladus. Enceladus can be seen spewing ice and other gases into space. This process is known as cryovolcanism. Scientists believe that Enceladus has only been active 1-20% of its existence so we are extremely lucky that Cassini was able to catch this image.
This is an amazing image: Saturn’s moon Janus is above the rings, and Saturn’s second largest moon Rhea is below, somewhat obscured by Saturn’s awesome rings. Cassini again mesmerizes!
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot -“The Oldest Storm in the Universe?” via dailygalaxy
One of the instruments on a 2016 mission to orbit Mars will provide daily maps of global, pole-to-pole, vertical distributions of the temperature, dust, water vapor and ice clouds in the Martian atmosphere.
Most Detailed Photo of a Sunspot Ever
Like the centre of a flower or a mysterious eye, this is the most detailed image of a sunspot ever captured using visible light. The stunning picture of the huge 8,000 mile-diameter sunspot (the dark part at the center of the photo) was taken using the Big Bear Telescope in California. At the center of the sunspot the temperature is around 3,600C, while the surrounding regions are hotter than 5,800C. The irregular shapes that surround the sunspot are known as granulations, made of hot gases from inside the Sun, each of which is around 1000km in size.
Weird Oblong Crater Deepens Mars Mystery
This amoeba-shaped depression on Mars, called Orcus Patera, has had planetary scientists scratching their heads for decades. Despite this sharp new image from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, the crater’s origin is a complete mystery.
Orcus Patera, discovered in 1965 by the Mariner 4 spacecraft, is located near Mars’ equator, between the volcanoes Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons. At 236 miles long, it would stretch from New York to Boston on Earth. Its rim rises over a mile above the surrounding plains, and its floor lies 1,300 to 1,900 feet below its surroundings.
But in spite of lying between two volcanoes and its designation as a patera — the name for deep, complex or irregularly shaped volcanic craters — scientists aren’t at all sure that Orcus Patera has a volcanic origin story. It could be a large impact crater that was originally round but later deformed by compressional forces. Or it could have formed after the erosion of aligned impact craters. The most likely explanation is that it was made in an oblique impact, when a small body struck the surface at a very shallow angle, like a rock skipping on a pond.
The new images show that the crater’s rim is criss-crossed by rift-valley-like structures called graben, which are evidence for active tectonic forces in the area. Smaller graben are also visible inside the depression itself, suggesting that several tectonic events have stretched the ground. The depression also shows “wrinkle edges,” which indicate that the ground has been compressed as well as stretched. The dark shapes near the center of the depression were probably formed when dark material dug up by small impacts in the depression was blown around by the wind.
But these features all appeared after Orcus Patera was formed.
The oblong crater’s origin is still a mystery.
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Story: Wired Science
