All posts by space

Secrets of Space

Map of Triton

Triton - NASA
Data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft was used to create this map of Triton

Dr. Paul Schenk, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (which is part of the Universities Space Research Association research organization) in Houston created this map of Triton. He used data gathered by the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it had flown by Neptune’s moon Triton in 1989. This is considered to be one of the best mapping of Triton.

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Enceladus’ South Pole

Enceladus - NASA
South pole region of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus

It must be a human tendency to name regions based on known areas on Earth, as Baghdad and Damascus show up on this depiction of the southern pole of Saturn’s moon – Enceladus. These Cassini survey images of the south pole, taken with Cassini’s narrow-angle camera,  look across the region of Enceladus’ geyser basin and down on the ends of the Baghdad and Damascus fractures that face Saturn. The  segments with these geysers with fractures seen in these images, are among the most active and warmest in the region

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Lithium mining in Nevada

Lithium mining - NASA
Lithium mining in Nevada

The mobile phone revolution and the projected increase in hybrid-electric and electric cars/transportation has brought the chemical element lithium to the masses. This metal is a key component in high-powered consumer and industrial battery technology. NASA’s Terra Earth observation satellite took this picture of Rockwood Lithium’s mining operations located in the Clayton Valley of Nevada. This is one of the very few lithium mining operations in the United States.

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Volcanic vent on Mercury

Mercury - NASA
Volcanic vent on planet Mercury

The wide angle camera on MESSENGER spacecraft’s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) took this snapshot of an area on Mercury located north of Rachmaninoff. It captured a possible volcanic vent (near the far left of the picture) and craters to the right of the volcanic vent. These type of vents on are indicative of explosive volcanism that was prevalent in Mercury’s past.

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10 bizarre things you’ll see in outer space

There are some very strange things that exist in space within our universe. Here are ten phenomenons that humans have been able to categorize as “bizarre” (so far).

Watch the video to learn more about methane rain on Titan, debris umbrellas on Io, strongest electrical currents from black holes, Transformer pulsar, Jupiter’s trademark red spot, huge water reservoir in an unreachable quasar, rogue planets, asteroid composed almost exclusively of iron and nickel, Barchan dunes on Mars and an asteroid with six tails.

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