Academia, Science

Messenger To Mercury Sends Back First Picture

This lovely place is Mercury — the first image taken from a spacecraft in orbit around the planet. The picture was sent back by NASA’s Mercury Messenger probe.

The best thing from Newt Gingrich’s standpoint: no atheists

The most amazing fact I knew about Mercury is that there is believed to be ice on the planet despite the fact that mean surface temperature of Mercury is 442.5 K and range from 100 K to 700 K. The ice is found on the dark side of the planet.

21 thoughts on “Messenger To Mercury Sends Back First Picture”

  1. If the ice is on the Dark Side of the planet, then we must be able to see Dick Cheney’s house in the picture!
    Bdaman,
    That is a great Taj Mahal song. I bought that Cassette (showing my age) when I was in college.

  2. “The best thing from Newt Gingrich’s standpoint: no atheists”

    Good so let all the fundies have Mercury for their Taliban-ish utopia.

  3. Bear:

    very interesting, I guess you actually know something about astrophysics.

  4. Bear,

    You are correct. My bad. Thanks for the catch. It’s a big universe. One cannot remember all of it.

  6. Mike Appleton
    1, March 30, 2011 at 10:14 am
    Wow, thanks for the explanation of the photograph. For a brief instant I thought I was looking at Michele Bachmann’s brain scan.

    ==========================

    lol

  7. Mercury is not tidally locked like the moon. It has a 3:2 resonance – that is it does 3 complete turns every two orbits. There is no permanent dark side.

    The ice, if it exists, is in deep craters in the polar regions. The floor of those craters are never exposed to sunlight. We’ve found evidence of the same phenomena on the moon.

  8. CORRECTION: There is always often ice on the dark side of planets that are tidally locked such as Mercury.

    The requisite chemicals capable of forming ices must be present, naturally.

  10. The ice is found on the dark side of the planet.
    ————————————————-
    ice is ALWAYS found on the dark side….

  11. Wow, thanks for the explanation of the photograph. For a brief instant I thought I was looking at Michele Bachmann’s brain scan.

  12. Come on guys, can you not see this thread for the beauty instead of showing the ugliness.

    guess I’m goin fishin

    many good fish bite if you got good bait here’s a little tip I’d like to relate with my pole and my line I’m a goin fishing I’m a goin fishin and da-baby goin fishin too.

  13. so you are saying they are not just trolls but that they don’t know comedy either?

  15. knupasiya,

    I thought the Book was titled “I Am Rich, You are Not” The Life and Times of Cheating You right……

    by Dewey Cheatum and a Forward by Howe Ivan B. Drained……

  16. Not sure if we gained some new moran trolls or just good comics. Its sad when an entire political philosophy is so stupid as to be indistinguishable from parody.

  17. The Koch family came from Mercury after they destroyed it by bringing the sun closer to the planet. The weight of all their money increased the gravitational attraction and altered the sun’s orbit.

    from “The Liberal Handbook of Knowledge that isnt So”

  18. But will it show the enormous wealth that the Koch family still maintains on the planet? Or was that Pluto or our Uranus…..

  19. There used to be life on Mercury but global warming killed it. Nasa photos will show old SUV’s and smokestacks.

  20. The MESSENGER team is currently looking over the newly returned data, which are still continuing to come down. Today at 2 p.m. NASA opens it all up.

    Media Teleconference: New Images from Mercury Orbit
    03.28.11

    MESSENGER above Mercury Date: Wednesday, March 30, 2011
    Time: 2 p.m. EDT
    Reporters may ask questions from participating NASA locations. The briefing will be streamed live on NASA’s Web site at: http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html.
    During the briefing, related images will be available at: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/presscon8.html.

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