Hi Mad Monk,
Just thought you and others on the thread might like a report on somewhat current conditions on Mars.
>>From AIP Physics Update (11/20/96):
> WHAT'S HAPPENING ON OTHER WORLDS?
> On Mars an Oklahoma-sized duststorm swirls about near the northern
> pole, while at Neptune storms and a northern-hemisphere dark spot
> discovered only last year were tracked by the first movie ever made of
> the entire Neptune rotation period (Hubble Space Telescope press
> releases). Saturn's inner ring is dripping water onto the planet below
> (New Scientist, 26 October). The Galileo spacecraft has updated
> knowledge of Jupiter and its moons, a miniature solar system all by
> itself. New reports suggest that the Great Red Spot (essentially a
> 20,000-km-wide storm rotating at a speed of 110 m/sec) is probably a
> shallow structure; the volcanic moon Io may be the source of at least
> some of the interplanetary dust coming from the Jovian environment;
> many plate-shaped structures on Europa's surface may, like Arctic ice
> floes on Earth, be fractured ice riding on top of a slushy ocean; the
> ancient ridges on Ganymede appear now (with the help of Galileo's much
> better resolving power: 74 m/pixel versus Voyager's 1.1 km/pixel) to
> be flanked by many more finer ridges, implying a thinner crust and a
> hotter interior than previously thought (Science, 18 October). Further
> out yet, a new extrasolar planet has been detected near the star 16
> Cygni B; the orbit is the most eccentric of any planet yet known. It
> comes as close as 0.6 and as far as 2.8 astronomical units from the
> star (Science News, 26 October).
Cheers,
Margaret |
