Tag Archive for 'Mercury'

The surface of Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view; image scale is 1.6 km per pixel; north on Europa is at right. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SETI Institute.

Planetary Researchers Examine Tidal Effects on Interiors of Planets and Their Moons

Nov 7, 2024 by News Staff

A team of scientists from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, TU Delft, and Caltech has developed a new method to compute...

An artist’s representation of BepiColombo flying through precipitating electrons that can trigger X-ray auroras on the surface of Mercury. Image credit: Thibaut Roger / Europlanet.

Auroral Mechanisms May Be Universal throughout Our Solar System

Jul 18, 2023 by News Staff

An analysis of data obtained during the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft’s first Mercury flyby reveals that Mercury’s southern magnetosphere aurorae...

A cinnabar-painted vessel from the Maya site of Kaminaljuyu in southern Guatemala. Image credit: Kidder et al. / Cook et al., doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2022.986119.

Settlements of Ancient Maya were Contaminated with Mercury, Scientists Say

Sep 23, 2022 by News Staff

The ancient Maya in Mesoamerica used mercury — predominantly cinnabar, but rarely elemental mercury — for decorative and ceremonial purposes,...

BepiColombo captured this view of Mercury on June 23, 2023 as the spacecraft flew past the planet for its second of six gravity assist maneuvers at Mercury. This image was taken at 09:51:07 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 3, when the spacecraft was 1,406 km from the surface of Mercury. Closest approach of 200 km took place shortly before, at 09:44 UTC. In this view, north is up. While clearly a heavily cratered region, this image also highlights some of Mercury’s volcanic history. Mercury’s smooth plains were formed by volcanic eruptions of runny lavas that spread across the planet 3.7 billion years ago -- such as the plains visible between BepiColombo’s high-gain antenna and towards Mercury’s limb. The eruptions that formed these plains did not commonly build volcanoes that we are familiar with on Earth. The floor of the 125-km-wide Heaney crater (next to BepiColombo’s high-gain antenna in the centre of this image) is covered in smooth volcanic plains, and a small mound is illuminated. This is a rare example of a candidate volcano on Mercury, which will be an important target for BepiColombo’s high resolution imaging suite once in orbit. North of Heaney, past the high-gain antenna, is the 105-km-wide Amaral crater with a clearly defined rim and a central peak cluster. The region surrounding Amaral is pockmarked with so-called secondary craters caused by material ejected from Amaral during its formation re-impacting onto the surface nearby. This texture is common around fresh craters on Mercury. Image credit: ESA / BepiColombo / MTM.

BepiColombo Makes Its Second Gravity Assist Flyby of Mercury

Jun 24, 2022 by News Staff

BepiColombo, a joint endeavor between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), captured beautiful views of the...

This color image of Mercury was generated from three MESSENGER images taken through filters sensitive to light in different wavelengths. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Planet Mercury Has Magnetic Storms, New Research Shows

Mar 31, 2022 by News Staff

The significantly weaker magnetic field, smaller magnetosphere, and much faster timescale of processes around Mercury, when compared with Earth, enable...

$Possible scenarios of terrestrial planet formation: in the classic Wetherill-type model of oligarchic growth, the terrestrial planets formed by mutual collisions among Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos after the gas disk dissipated and accreted only a small fraction of CC planetesimals, which were scattered inward during Jupiter’s growth and/or putative migration; alternatively, the terrestrial planets may have formed within the lifetime of the gas disk by efficiently accreting ‘pebbles’ from the outer Solar System, which drift sunward through the disk due to gas drag; the two models differ in the amount of outer solar system material accreted by the terrestrial planets, which may be quantified using nucleosynthetic isotope anomalies. Image credit: Burkhardt et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abj7601.$

Earth and Other Terrestrial Planets Formed from Inner Solar System Material, Study Suggests

Dec 28, 2021 by News Staff

Two fundamentally different processes of rocky planet formation exist, but it is unclear which one built the Earth and other terrestrial solar system planets....

The Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 2 captured this image at 23:44:12 UTC, when the spacecraft was about 2,418 km from Mercury. Image credit: ESA / BepiColombo / MTM / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

BepiColombo Makes Its First Gravity Assist Flyby of Mercury

Oct 4, 2021 by News Staff

On October 1, 2021, BepiColombo — a joint endeavor between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) —...

The asteroid 2021 PH27 was imaged inside Mercury’s orbit and has been colored red and blue to show the two different times where it was imaged on August 13, 2021 -- just three minutes apart. Image credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / DOE / DECam / AURA / S.S. Sheppard, Carnegie Institution of Science.

Astronomers Discover Fastest-Orbiting Asteroid Ever Seen

Aug 24, 2021 by News Staff

The newly-discovered asteroid 2021 PH27 has a diameter of about 1 km (3,280 feet) and orbits the Sun in just 113 days — the shortest known orbital...

Proximity to Sun’s Magnetic Field Determines Composition of Rocky Planets, Study Says

Jul 2, 2021 by News Staff

Terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) are differentiated into three layers: a metallic core, a silicate shell (mantle and crust), and a...

Computer model of the Antikythera Mechanism’s display: in the center, the dome of the Earth, the phase of the Moon and its position in the Zodiac -- then rings for Mercury, Venus, true Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Date, with ‘little sphere’ markers and smaller markers for oppositions. Scale marks and index letters for the synodic cycles of the planets are inscribed on the planet rings. Surrounding these, the Zodiac and the Egyptian Calendar. The true Sun ring has a ‘little golden sphere’ with ‘pointer.’ When the Moon and Sun pointers coincide, the Moon sphere shows black for New Moon; when the pointers are on opposite sides, the Moon sphere shows white for Full Moon. The Head of the Dragon Hand shows the ascending lunar node; the Tail the descending node. Small triangles on the true Sun ring, near the pointer, show wider and narrower eclipse limits. Eclipses are possible if the Dragon Hand is within these limits. When the Moon pointer is before the Head of the Dragon, the Moon is South of the node; after, it is North of the node -- conversely for the descending node. A Date pointer is attached to a narrow date ring, showing the date in the Egyptian Calendar. Image credit: Freeth et al., doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-84310-w.

Scientists Step Closer to Understanding Full Capabilities of Antikythera Mechanism

Mar 15, 2021 by News Staff

A team of researchers from University College London and the Cyprus Institute’s Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center has...

An artist’s impression of a water-world exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Aquatic Planets are Common in Our Milky Way Galaxy, Study Suggests

Feb 23, 2021 by News Staff

In a study published in the journal Science Advances, a team of European astronomers shows that water can be delivered to a terrestrial planet in the form...

BepiColombo completed its first flyby of Venus on October 15, 2020, coming within 10,720 km of the planet for a gravity assist maneuver. Image credit: ESA / BepiColombo / MTM / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

BepiColombo Makes Its First Flyby of Venus

Oct 16, 2020 by News Staff

BepiColombo, a joint endeavor between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), successfully completed its first...

The ancient Maya city of Tikal in northern Guatemala. Image credit: Gerd Eichmann / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Archaeologists Find Toxic Chemicals in Water Reservoirs of Ancient Maya City of Tikal

Jun 30, 2020 by News Staff

New research reveals that two of the largest reservoirs at Tikal, an ancient Maya city in what is now northern Guatemala, were contaminated with high levels...

This snailfish (bottom-left of the image) at 8,145 meters is a record for the deepest fish ever filmed; small amphipods are visible in the center. Image credit: University of Aberdeen.

Scientists Find Anthropogenic Mercury in Earth’s Deepest Oceanic Trenches

Jun 23, 2020 by News Staff

Two teams of marine biologists have found methylmercury, a potent toxin that bioaccumulates in marine food webs, in sediments and endemic fauna from Mariana,...

Cosmic rays striking Venus’ atmosphere eject neutrons that gradually fly into space. As neutrons move to higher altitudes, more time passes, and more neutrons radioactively decay. MESSENGER counted the number of neutrons seen at various altitudes, allowing researchers to home in on where neutron numbers start falling off. Using models, researchers can then estimate the neutron lifetime. Image credit: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

NASA’s MESSENGER Mission Carries Out Space-Based Measurements of Neutron’s Lifetime

Jun 12, 2020 by News Staff

Using data acquired in 2007 and 2008 during flybys of Venus and Mercury by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, researchers found the neutron lifetime to be...

This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER’s primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up the planet’s surface. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Mercury’s Extreme Daytime Heat May Help It Make Its Polar Ice

Mar 16, 2020 by News Staff

In 2011, NASA’s MESSENGER orbiter detected signals typical of glacial ice near the poles on Mercury. The ice was dingy and lurked in permanent shadows...

Normal and mutated fern spores from the end-Triassic mass extinction. Scale bar - 20 μm. Image credit: Sofie Lindström, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

Gaseous Mercury Emissions from Volcanoes Contributed to End-Triassic Mass Extinction

Oct 30, 2019 by News Staff

The end-Triassic mass extinction occurred 201.51 million years ago and resulted in the demise of some 76% of all marine and land species. Up until now,...

Mercury. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Mercury Has Solid Inner Core, Planetary Scientists Say

Apr 18, 2019 by News Staff

Planetary researchers have long known that Earth and Mercury have metallic cores. Mercury’s core fills nearly 85% of the volume of the planet —...

The discovery of a spike of mercury in 252-million-year-old rock at locations around the world gives evidence for the prevailing theory that volcanic eruptions caused the end-Permian extinction. Image credit: Margaret Weiner / University of Cincinnati Creative Services.

Volcanic Eruptions Caused End-Permian Extinction, New Evidence Confirms

Apr 17, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of paleontologists from China and the United States has found high levels of mercury in the end-Permian marine sediments at nearly...

In this illustration, several dust rings circle the Sun. These rings form when planets’ gravities tug dust grains into orbit around the Sun. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith.

Astronomers Detect Circumsolar Dust Ring near Mercury’s Orbit

Mar 13, 2019 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, and the University of Colorado, Boulder, has found evidence for a fine...

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