Showing posts with label Planet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Planet. Show all posts

Sunday, 2 December 2012

Organics Discovered on Mercury


Mercury-pole-zoom
The north pole of Mercury as seen by MESSENGER during a 2008 flyby. Credit: NASA
NASA dispatched the Curiosity rover to Mars to look for organics, but a probe orbiting Mercury has beaten it to the punch.
New results from the MESSENGER spacecraft not only confirm that the planet closest to the sun has ice inside shaded craters near the north pole, but that a thin layer of very dark organic material seems to be covering a good part of the frozen water.
Both likely arrived via comets or asteroids millions -- or hundreds of millions -- of years ago.
BIG PIC: Dark Shadows Freeze Mercury's North Pole
Unlike Curiosity, which will be directly sampling Martian rocks and soils to look for signs of organic material, MESSENGER bounces laser beams and counts neutrons and gamma rays to collect information remotely about chemical elements on Mercury’s surface.
The information is correlated with detailed topographical and temperature maps, laboratory tests and computer models and then compared with candidate materials to find the best match for the observed conditions.

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Saturday, 1 December 2012

Some amazing facts about Solar Eclipse

Witnessing a Solar or lunar eclipse is always a very stunning experience for those who love to see miracles. By the Way how many of you have witnessed the most recent Solar Eclipse which occurred yesterday on May 20, 2012? Have you ever thought how this rare phenomenon occurs? Let us put some light on it.
What is Solar Eclipse:
A solar eclipse occurs when the moon comes between the earth and sun while revolving, and blocks the sun partially or fully. It occurs only on new moon and it blocks the light of sun to reach the earth. In fact, the moon and the sun are in conjunction as seen from the earth so the sun is completely invisible. The moon does not have its own light because it relies on Sun’s light reflected by earth, so it becomes dark during this whole process.
Eclipse types
Total Eclipse: When the sun is completely hidden behind the moon leaving a solar corona behind that is visible to naked eye.

annular-eclipse
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Some cool facts about planet earth

Planet earth is the third planet from the sun and the only known planet having Life in it. It is the fifth largest planet of our solar system. In this post, we have tried to gather major components of earth along with all the facts and figures.
So lets explore the earth.
Facts and figures:
Name: Earth
Origin of Name: The word “earth” is derived from an ancient word “eorthe“. Eorthe means ground or dry land. The earth is the only planet in the solar system that is not named after the Roman or Greek gods. Earth is also known as Globe or World.
Situated in: Milky Way Galaxy
Mass of Earth: 5.9736×1024 or 5,973,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg
Current age of earth: about 4.5 billion years
What you find in planet earth:
29.2% Land
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Friday, 30 November 2012

The Dead Sea, the nature’s wonder

dead sea

The Dead Sea or the Sea of Salt is one of the natural wonders in the world with some surprising specialties. The dead sea is in fact not a sea but a lake which is being fed by the Jordan river. It is bordered by Jordan, Israel and West Bank. It is famous for its vast amount of salt and other minerals which made this watering body different from all other seas and lakes. Today, we are going to explore the Dead Sea.

Dead Sea quick facts and figures:

Name: Dead Sea, The Salt Sea, Sea of the plains, Sea of Salt.
Length: 67.4 km
width: 18 km
source of water: The Jordan river

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