Dots around the face of mars series#

Optical: NASA/AURA/STScIįew places in all the universe capture the grandeur and sheer scale of space as effectively as a stellar nursery - a giant cloud in which gas and dust contract to form new stars. On the Earth Similarity Index measuring 0-1, it clocks in at around 0.92 – beating out former frontrunner Gliese 667Cc. A rocky planet with a radius about 1.5 times that of Earth, it orbits closer to its star than we do, but remains in the habitable Goldilocks zone (neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water) because its red dwarf only pumps out about one-hundredth the solar energy our sun does. But few planets can compare to Gliese 581g in terms of human-friendliness. Īs of February 2014, NASA's Kepler spacecraft has located 3,601 exoplanet candidates and confirmed 246. Habitable options around other stars include Gliese 667Cc, Kepler-22b, HD85512 b, Mars and, for a while at least, Earth.

We can't guarantee it'll provide much of a vacation spot, but at least in the Gliese 581 system you'll have your pick of two planets in the habitable zone: d and g. īy now, maybe you're getting a little homesick, or maybe you just need a survivable place to park while you work on repairs. The plumes could also erupt from smaller lakes or ponds trapped in the ice. The same gravitational forces that drive Europa's geyser activity could provide enough energy to keep water from freezing solid, even on a moon half a billion miles from the sun. These cracks hint at the moon's possible structure, which scientists believe consists of a mile-thick icy covering overlaying a subsurface ocean. Still, its icy surface possesses an exotic beauty traced out in veiny fractures across its crisscrossed shell. Įuropa's icy surface makes it cue-ball smooth compared to Jupiter's other Galilean satellites (the four largest of Jupiter's 50-67 moons). Roughly the size of Earth's moon, its jets spew water more than 125 miles (201 kilometers) high when squeezed by the gravitational tidal forces of the gas giant and its major satellites. Yellowstone National Park's Old Faithful is a superheated squirt gun compared to the geysers found on Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, Europa. Why the age gap? We know today's GRS was described by American astronomer Carr Walter Pritchett in 1878, but some believe it's the same 'permanent spot' observed by Italian astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini in 1665. And that's what makes Jupiter's two-to-three-Earth-wide anticyclone so special: Depending on whom you ask, it's been spinning for at least 136 years, and possibly longer than 349. The fact is, these cyclonal beauty marks whirl about the faces of the other gas giants, too, and possibly on their close cousins, the cool, starlike bodies called brown dwarfs. In 2000, the Hubble Space Telescope witnessed a second spot, nicknamed 'Red Jr.,' arise from the collision of three smaller spots. Cheese' on an astronomical scale - you could do far worse than Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) - or rather, spots. If you were looking for one landmark to distinguish our solar system - sort of a 'turn left at the burned-out Chuck E. Under this model, even the titanic Olympus Mons is but a wart on the face of the solar system's vastest volcano.

Dots around the face of mars series#

īut wait, we hear you say into your subspace communicator, doesn't this constitute a series of landmarks? Not according to some theories about the region's history, which argue that the Tharsis formation is actually one gigantic volcano (based on a broader definition that includes underlying tectonics and magma flows). Indeed, its 120-mile (200-kilometer) width and 4.3-mile (7-kilometer) depth make our Grand Canyon look like a side gulley. Longer than the United States is wide, the grandest canyon of all girdles one-fifth of the planet, running more than 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers). Sure, we could have chosen Olympus Mons, a shield volcano the size of Arizona and three times the height of Mount Everest, but how would exploring that monster be any easier? Or, continuing eastward past its three smaller sisters in the Tharsis Montes group - which range from 210-270 miles (350-450 kilometers) across and rise 9 miles (15 kilometers) above their surroundings - we could shoot down the Valles Marineris. Choosing a land feature that sprawls across a quarter of Mars might seem like cheating, but it's our list, so we make the rules.