The Astronomy Thread

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Kiroy

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Mercury has a magnetic field, though significantly weaker than Earth's. Venus has no magnetic field, but its rotation is also slower than it takes for Venus to go around the Sun.

I would imagine mercery’s core is still going because of its proximity to the sun?

Prob ez to lookup but my shit it about done
 

Burns

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According to the wiki, the sun has a tidal pull on Mercury that is, on average, 17 times stronger than the moon's tidal pull on earth. It also has the most eccentric orbit of all the planets, meaning that when it is closest to the sun it is 29 million miles away, and at it's furthest, it is 43 million miles away. Due to this oblong orbit, Mercury does rotate on its axis, causing the tidal pull to slowly make its way around the planet. This is called a 3:2 resonant tidal locking, which means it rotates 3 times on its axis, for every 2 rotations around the sun. It also makes a single solar day on Mercury take 178 earth days, or exactly 2 Mercury years.

Mercury's magnetosphere is ~1% the strength of Earth.
 
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Burns

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The most mysterious magnetosphere looks to be Ganymede.

11504.jpg


jupitersmoon.png
 
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Burns

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So the next mission to Jupiter will spend a bunch of time getting data on it:
Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, possesses a strong intrinsic magnetic field that gives rise to a mini-magnetosphere through interaction with Jupiter's magnetospheric plasma. Ganymede's magnetosphere provides a natural laboratory for studying a variety of fundamental space plasma processes, such as magnetic reconnection, aurora generation and space weathering. We have been developing global magnetosphere models, including both MHD and MHD with Embedded Particle-in-Cell (MHD-EPIC) models, for Ganymede to characterize its magnetic and plasma environment. The upcoming Jupiter ICy Moon Explorer (JUICE) mission, planned to launch around 2023 and arrive at Jupiter in 2030, will orbit the moon to sample key regions of its magnetosphere and to obtain measurements that would allow for determination of the interior structure, especially the characteristics of its putative sub-surface ocean. Prof. Jia is Co-Investigator on the PEP (Particle Environment Package), J-MAG (Magnetometer), and RPWI (Radio and Plasma Wave Instrument) teams of the JUICE mission.​

JUICE-Mission.png
 
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Ukerric

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Little fill-up piece while waiting for the late October full crew mission, but still awesome:

 
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Tuco

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32 months after launch...


I know it's as dumb as launching it in the first place, but if SpaceX ever runs an "asteroid capture" test mission to recapture their Tesla Roadster it'd be pretty amazing.
 
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meStevo

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I'm disappointed there isn't some little solar powered camera on it or something.
 
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Kharzette

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It would be really interesting to recover it eventually and see what kind of shape it is in.
 
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Cybsled

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Honestly it would be better if they just left it there. Then thousands of years in the future, during some epic struggle for the fate of the solar system, the roadster comes barreling in and destroys the bridge of the enemy command ship, swinging the tide of battle.
 
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Tuco

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Been watching this youtube channel lately. I love the visuals, ideas and information, but as a layman I can't help but wonder if some of the information isn't the physics equivalent to preformationism or something.

Ex: this one:


It's a fun concept and I'm sure there's a lot of big brains who came up with the ideas, but I can't help but thing that superradiant scattering on a black-hole scale has as much realism as an epstein drive. Still a great youtube channel!
 
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