Thanks to all the Trinity Anglican School year 5 students and teachers at White Rock and Kewarra Beach, I have been seeking out interesting website links to help them write poems about the Solar System. Here are 12 topics from the list students gave me yesterday.
1. CERES: A SPOTTY ASTEROID
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news-detail.html?id=4633
At almost 1,000km diameter (across), Ceres is the largest body in the Asteroid Belt (in between Mars and Jupiter). We recently gave it the title “Dwarf Planet” because of its size. We thought asteroids were hard rocky bodies, but Ceres contains lots of water (as ice).
Bright white spots on Ceres have scientists excited. What’s that spot? Is it ice, salt or some other highly reflective material?
Could some of these white spots be where there’s a kind of hole in Ceres, blowing out gasses into space – like a soft simpering volcano? Maybe Ceres is farting! The space probe Dawn has taken a photo that shows a kind of haze over the biggest group of white spots.
http://www.nature.com/news/mystery-haze-appears-above-ceres-bright-spots-1.18032
Many craters have pointed peaks at their centre, as though the impacted surface of Ceres melted and “bounced back” after it was hit by something, such as another small asteroid (shooting star).
Some surface areas on Ceres are smooth, as though they have had mud or slushy snow flowing over them.
So Ceres is more than a pock-marked block of rock. It is a special asteroid with interesting mysteries we hope to solve.
2. COMET 67P: DUCKS & DRAGONS
It took 10 years for the Rosetta solar-powered spacecraft (and its probe Philae) to meet up with the Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (This 10 minute video is about how that was achieved – not much comet info.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b7u6stKgfs
I got the information below from this 30 minute lecture video – very detailed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BuotFLgXVY
- Comet 67P has a surface as black as a tarmac road. Apparently our Moon has too! But they both reflect the Sunlight, which makes them look white when not in the shade.
- Comet 67P is 4km long and shaped like a duck. Its north & south pole axis is on the duck shape’s narrow neck. So it spins, with the two large knobs circling like a fairground ride.
- It rotates every 12 hrs and is colder than anywhere on Earth (-68°C).
- It is half the density of ice, more like cork – so a lot of its material must be like fluffy snow.
- Comets are dirty snowballs (with tails of gas and icy particles streaming away from the Sun).
- It is spurting out jets of dust and gas, mostly on its bright side. But sometimes a jet on its dark side appears (which scientist think is weird).
- The particles shooting into space come in two varieties; dense particles, like grains of sand, and fluffy ones, like a dandelion seed or fluffy snowflakes.
- It looks like it has a crack in its neck. So is it going to break into two pieces?
- There are areas that look like sand dunes (even though there is no wind on a comet). There are rocky looking cliffs (probably ice coated in dust) with landslides of loose boulders and smoother avalanches.
- There are craters with very thin rims and, strangest of all, are some deep pits lined with 1 metre diameter round balls, that scientists have nick-named “dragon eggs”!
3. ENCELADUS SPITS ON SATURN
There are 101 geysers in those “Tiger Stripes” on Saturn’s second moon Enceladus, spitting out water from a deep underground ocean. So does Enceladus’s Moon-Spit have germs? Could it contain microbes? Some scientists think so …
http://www.astrobio.net/news-brief/enceladus-in-101-geysers/
But others have discovered that Enceladus may contain an “anti-freeze” of ammonia. Ammonia readily mixes with water, making ammonium hydroxide. Dilute ammonium hydroxide is often called “household ammonia” and is used for cleaning! So would Enceladus be too “clean” for germs (and microbes) to grow? Start reading near the colourful image of moon-spit half way down the page where the paragraph begins with the word Ammonia:
http://www.astrobio.net/topic/solar-system/saturn/enceladus/how-enceladus-got-its-stripes/
4. EUROPA: MISSION TO FIND LIFE
Giant gas planet Jupiter has many moons. But we are most excited about its second moon, Europa, because we think it may have an underground ocean. I wrote the poem Europa’s Secrets from the information we gained with the Cassini space probe mission.
There is a fantastic 3 minute video on this Europa-mission link below. Beautiful images of Europa’s surface as well as what we hope to discover there with this new mission to Europa:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/
And this link has more information about Europa:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4627
NASA’s Galileo mission to Jupiter in the late 1990s produced strong evidence that Europa, about the size of Earth’s moon, has an ocean beneath its frozen crust. If proven to exist, this global ocean could hold more than twice as much water as Earth. With abundant salt water, a rocky sea floor, and the energy and chemistry provided by tidal heating, Europa may have the ingredients needed to support simple organisms.
The mission plan calls for a spacecraft to be launched to Jupiter in the 2020s, arriving in the distant planet’s orbit after a journey of several years. The spacecraft would orbit the giant planet about every two weeks, providing many opportunities for close flybys of Europa. The mission plan includes 45 flybys, during which the spacecraft would image the moon’s icy surface at high resolution and investigate its composition and the structure of its interior and icy shell.
5. IO: EXPLODING MINI-MOON
Tiny Io is the closest moon to Saturn. Tortured by its parent planet’s gravity, Io “goes off” every now and again! Lava fountains, lava rivers and lava lakes have been recorded in relation to Io’s volcanic explosions.
http://www.astrobio.net/news-brief/curtains-fire-peering-ios-volcanic-laboratory/
6. JUPITER’S STORMY EYE
A gargantuan cyclone or tempest rages in Jupiter’s thick gassy layers of hydrogen and helium. And scientists think that updrafts are why it’s raged for years. It’s a bit like ocean currents that can form a maelstrom or whirlpool. Or tornadoes and cyclones in our atmosphere.
There’s concise information about Jupieter’s red spot in the orange box at the bottom of this article:
Get in the mood with some whirlpool videos …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBWqaamZ01I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR0acn_2LXs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqXAKCFVi_4
Or with National Geographic storm chasers …
http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/nature/storm-chaser-video-reveals-devastating-tornadoes.aspx
7. MARS: DUST STORMS
A giant crater (Hellas Basin) full of dust is mostly to blame for these incredible storms. The crater’s bottom is warmer than the atmosphere above. This difference in temperature can cause the air on Mars to whip up storms and fling that dust around in just a matter of hours.
http://www.universetoday.com/14892/mars-dust-storms/
As the dust grains rub together in a storm, they can cause static electricity so powerful it could change the chemistry of the molecules in the air, making it snow Hydrogen Peroxide! (which is poisonous to living things).
http://www.universetoday.com/405/electrical-dust-storms-could-make-life-on-mars-impossible/
8. MERCURY’S SPIDER
Rock varieties on Mercury are highlighted by how they reflect light colours differently. This detailed image clearly shows the location of the Mercury’s “Spider”.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/bill-dunford/20140127-giant-spider-of-mercury.html
Situated inside the giant crater named the Caloris Basin (about 1,500 km across). A smaller impact site (Apollodorus – about 40 km diameter) has lines, like spider legs, radiating from its centre. These furrows named Pantheon Fossae are hundreds of kilometres long. They would have been formed when a meteor struck there, making Mercury’s crust spread out the stress of the impact, similar to the pattern of a cracked glass.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080923084541.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/30jan_mercurysurprise/
9. SUN’S LOOPY FLARES
Video of solar flares
https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/170907-solar-flares-vin-spd.
A general info video on the Sun (beware the measurements are in miles not kilometres, degrees farenheit not centigrade):
One mystery about the Sun is why its CORONA (upper atmosphere) is heaps hotter than the Sun’s surface. Broiling on the surface is a plasma of hydrogen & helium gas behaving in a “loopy” way. Scientists now think that the action of magnetic fields and nanoflares make the corona hotter than the surface.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18020-suns-rain-could-explain-why-corona-heat-is-insane/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528785-200-cold-solar-loops-may-help-solve-corona-puzzle/
10. TITAN’S METHANE RAIN
Titan is Saturn’s largest moon. Titan is larger than planet Mercury and shrouded in a thick orange-green soupy atmosphere of methane, ten times thicker than Earth’s blue air atmosphere.
I love this 4 minute video from the Huygens probe as it parachuted down to the surface of Titan, then looked up at the Sun before resting its gaze on the pebbly landscape nearby. One raindrop of methane (condensation) falls. Remember this is a speeded up video as it took over 30 minutes to fall through Titan’s thick methane atmosphere. So the raindrop doesn’t appear to be as slow as it was in “real time”.
http://www.space.com/28265-saturn-moon-titan-landing-anniversary.html
below: NASA facts about Titan (see Alien Weather):
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/index.cfm?SciencePageID=75
Bathtub rings on Titan – nice colour photos:
http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/bathtub-rings-suggest-titans-dynamic-seas/
11. URANUS: HARD-HEARTED WITH WEIRD ORBIT
Uranus has two sets of dark rings – probably from a smashed-up moon or moons. And has a weird orbit around the Sun, as though it is “rolling round the Sun”. Here’s a great video of information about our quirky, often misunderstood gas / ice giant which possibly has diamonds in its core!
http://study.com/academy/lesson/uranus-moons-rings-atmosphere-rotation.html
How to pronounce the word Uranus properly!
12. VENUS: LAVA FLOWS & METAL SNOWS
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/on-venus-it-snows-metal-99154/?no-ist
There’s metal snow on the mountaintops of Venus. It’s far too hot for water ice!
Two types of metal: galena and bismuthinite in their metallic mineral form start to vapourise at Venus’ hot temperatures of 480°C. They float into the atmosphere as a metallic mist. Like water vapour on Earth, this mist condenses at higher cooler altitudes, making it fall back to the ground as shiny silver frosty snow.
Check out “Does it really ‘snow’ Galena on Venus?”
http://geology.com/minerals/galena.shtml
What does Venus use instead of face cream, to keep her face wrinkle free?