By
Unknown -
Saturday, July 5, 2014
-
No Comments
We all know of the planet Mercury
being most well known for its position closest to the sun. Mercury
speeds around the sun at only 88 times a year making it the fastest
planet in our solar system by 31 miles per second. As a matter of fact,
it gets as close as 29 million miles away from the sun and can reach
temps of upward 800 fahrenheit. The night time temps are extreme as
well due to the lack of atmosphere the planet has. Those can reach a
nasty -280 Fahrenheit!
What we didn't know until recent was its true colors, literally. Mercury was always the gray planet closest to the sun. Our universe explorers NASA have a satellite in orbit called Messenger. Messenger is equipt with a multi filtered camera system that allows itself to isolate color variations and combine them for incredible photographs. It can actually perform mineralogical studies from orbit! In the pictures below you can see how Messenger's pictures
differentiate rock types and colors. The yellowish color indicates a
younger surface while the blueish color is a more aged surface. The
younger surface is obvious due to its lack of impact scares caused by
speeding space debris. Astronomers wish
these color patterns could be viewed by the bare eye, unfortunately
they can only be viewed this way through the Messenger's camera technologies.
 |
|
The Messenger
was moving at such a high rate of speed that scientists could not
decipher the mineral composition in the images. On the upside, Messenger
has already settled into orbit in 2011. What this means is now the
scientists will be able to map the surface of Mercury to the satellites
CPU giving us space junkies even better detail and more info on this
beat up, fried planet. We will keep our followers up to date as
possible with further images when made available.
Share This:
MyCatalyst
I'm Sreekanth. I am a Android Developer in Mobile IT Compny, and I am enjoying by creting blogs and sharing useful information.
No Comment to " Mercury, More Colorful Than We Ever Thought "