Astronomy Picture of the Day . Mercury's Surface in Exaggerated Color . ... Credit Copyright: NASA / JHU APL / CIW Explanation: The robotic MESSENGER spacecraft recently completed over 100 orbits of Mercury . ... Otherwise, to the unaided human eye, Mercury's surface colors would appear comparatively muted . ... Publications with keywords: Mercury - Mercury program - Mercury surface - Messenger - color . Publications with words: Mercury - Mercury program - Mercury surface - Messenger - color . ...

. Mars has become the center of intense interest since the Martian Meteorite results were announced. Currently there is a lively debate whether or not primitive life formed there or not.

Mercury Winter 2011 Table of Contents . ... An artist's impression of MESSENGER in orbit at Mercury. ... For instance, after liftoff in August 1977, it took Voyager 2 two years to reach Jupiter; three to get to Saturn; seven to reach Uranus; and more than 10 years to arrive at Neptune.Add on the pre-launch years required for mission concept and development, plus time for spacecraft construction, and it's no surprise that some astronomers devoted most of their career to the Voyager missions. ...

Mariner 10 . ... Mariner 10 was the seventh successful launch in the Mariner spacecraft series, and the first to use the gravitational pull of one planet ( Venus ) to reach another ( Mercury ). ... It measured 1.39 meters (4.56 feet) diagonally and 0.457 meters (1.5 feet) in depth. ... Views of Mariner 10 . ... Venus/Mercury Mission . ... Launched in November 1973, this mission provided new information about Mercury and Venus in the Mariner program's first dual-planet mission. ...

Geotimes -- November 2005 -- Two more moons for "planet" Pluto http://www.geotimes.org/nov05/WebExtra110305.html Web Extra Thursday, November 3, 2005 Two more moons for Pluto When the New Horizons spacecraft finally reaches Pluto in July 2015, researchers will have more objects to study than previously thought. In addition to Pluto's confirmed moon Charon, astronomers have detected two more orbiting celestial bodies, which could help reveal how the planet and moon system formed. ...

... Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and the eighth largest. ... An account of the non-discovery of a planet inside Mercury's orbit. ... Heraclitus even believed that Mercury and Venus orbit the Sun, not the Earth. ... Until 1962 it was thought that Mercury's "day" was the same length as its "year" so as to keep that same face to the Sun much as the Moon does to the Earth. ... Actually Earth's density is due in part to gravitational compression; if not for this, Mercury would be denser than...

... Planets . ... The planets were found using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6m telescope at ESOтАЩs La Silla Observatory. ... A planet in orbit around a star causes the star to regularly move towards and away from observers on Earth. ... One newly discovered planet, HD 85512 b, is best hope found so far for a habitable exoplanet. ... The HARPS team so far have found that about 40% of stars similar to own Sun have at least one planet smaller than Saturn (which is 95 times more massive than Earth). ...

... M ercury is the closest planet to the Sun and the eighth largest. ... Heraclitus even believed that Mercury and Venus orbit the Sun, not the Earth. ... The perihelion of its orbit precesses around the Sun at a very slow rate. 19th century astronomers made very careful observations of Mercury's orbital parameters but could not adequately explain them using Newtonian mechanics. ... Actually Earth's density is due in part to gravitational compression; if not for this, Mercury would be denser than Earth...

... NASA SPACECRAFT FINDS NEW EVIDENCE FOR WATER ICE ON MERCURY . ... The new data indicate the water ice in Mercury's polar regions, if spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., would be more than 2 miles thick," said David Lawrence, a MESSENGER participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., and lead author of one of three papers describing the findings. ... Water ice concentrations are derived from the hydrogen measurements. ...

... Spacecraft . ... To space by cannon? Finally, the deep space explorers --spacecraft which break away from the Earth's gravity . ... The "Luna" series of the USSR conducted 7 soft landing of unmanned probes, two of them with wheeled robotic "Lunokhods," and two of those missions returned samples to Earth. Others spacecraft have visited the major planets of the Solar system. ... The Mariner series have explored Venus and Mars--and Mariner 10 even reached Mercury, for three separate encounters! ...

... Since planets are expected to form out of the material in disks around young stars, the formation of a planet will thoroughly alter the structure of the circumstellar disk of their host star, forming significant gaps in the radial distribution of matter around the star. Additionally, processing of solids (annealing/crystallization) and changes in the overall gas/dust ratio are thought to happen during the planet formation process and are believed to alter the observational signature of the disk. ...

... The package includes a new ``hybrid'' symplectic integrator capable of handling close encounters, described at the conference: The Impact of Modern Dynamics in Astronomy , Namur, Belgium (Chambers 1998). ... NRC Research Associate, NASA/Ames Research Center , Moffett Field CA, USA, planetary accretion, formation of the asteroid belt and extra-solar planets. ... G.Laughlin and J.E.Chambers (2002) Astronomical Journal, , in press. ... American Astron. ... Home page of planet hunters Marcy and Butler ....

... Tonight's Sky . ... The Magazine . ... Star Atlas . ... An artificial comet holds secrets to Earths life . ... Astronomy for Kids . ... Observing springtime deep-sky objects with a large telescope . ... The planet has extreme temperature swings and perhaps active lava flows. ... A digital supplement to Astronomy magazine. ... Join TravelQuest International with Astronomy and Discover magazines on one of three great tour options surrounding this celestial spectacle . ... Astronomy Magazine . ...

Four NASA spacecraft and spacecraft from Japan and Europe are planned to be in operation at Mars in early 2004. In addition to the three tracking stations of NASA's Deep Space Network, located in Australia (which CSIRO oversees on behalf of NASA), Spain, and the USA, NASA has enlisted the 64-m Parkes dish of the ATNF to help track these spacecraft during the busy period, November 2003 to February 2004. NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey probes are already orbiting the planet. ...

Saturn: The beauty of the rings. Saturn . ... Belongs to the giant planets . It has no definite solid surface. ... The free fall acceleration at the Saturn surface near equator is 9,06 m/s^2 . ... In the centre of the planet the temperature is about 20000K. The satellites . ... The rings of Saturn . ... It is proved that Saturn's rings (as well as the other planet's) are the fragments of the great cloud being near the planet with million kilometres length (see how the rings were formed ). ...

The basic problems of the Laboratory are connected with researches of dynamics of minor planets and comets. ... THE ORBIT IMPROVEMENT of minor planets from optical and radar observations, . the utilization of minor planet observations for THE DETERMINATION OF ORIENTATION OF STAR CATALOGUES and DETERMINATION OF MASSES OF MINOR PLANETS BY DYNAMICAL METHOD, . THE ESTIMATION OF COLLISION PROBABILITY of minor planets with other bodies and with each other, . ...

Pulkovo NEO Page . ... The main publications are: the Minor Planet Circulars, containing astrometric observations, orbits, ephemerides, new numberings and namings of asteroids and comets; the Minor Planet Electronic Circulars, supplying information on unusual minor planets (including NEOs) and new discoveries. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov . ... Plenty of information on all NEAs, including their observations at numerous world observatories. http://spaceguard.iasf-roma.inaf.it/ . ...

... Search . ... Astrophysics Group . Research . ... Research and Instrumentation . ... While this seems an extraordinary endeavour, in light of what we have learnt about Solar System planets, only a handful of key ingredients are required to start characterising an exoplanet. ... The NGTS project is a partnership between the University of Cambridge, Queen?s University Belfast, University of Warwick, University of Leicester, Observatoire de Geneve, DLR (Berlin) and Universidad Catolica de Chile. ...

National Aeronautics and Space Administration . ... JOHN E. BLAHA (COLONEL, USAF, RET.) NASA ASTRONAUT (FORMER) . ... EDUCATION: Graduated from Granby High School in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1960; received a bachelor of science in engineering science from the United States Air Force Academy in 1965 and a master of science in astronautical engineering from Purdue University in 1966. ... NASA EXPERIENCE: Selected as an astronaut in May 1980, Blaha has logged 161 days in space on 5 space missions. ...

Michele Bannister . Other research . ... The mutual events of Haumea . The dwarf planet Haumea is the parent of a collisional family that includes its two moons, Hi'iaka and Namaka. ... The arid and windswept McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica are carpeted with the polygons of patterned ground , a geological formation that is also seen on the northern plains of the planet Mars. ... I worked to understand the influence that buried masses of ice have on the development of patterned ground. ...