Weird Worlds: Bizarre Bodies of the Solar System and Beyond (Astronomers' Universe)
Language: English
Pages: 309
ISBN: 1461470633
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This book concentrates on the “odd and interesting” aspects of planetary bodies, including asteroids and moons, describing unusual features of these worlds and the ways in which they appear “weird” to us. Also discusses the possibility of methane-based organisms.
Scientific Method in Ptolemy's Harmonics
Space And Astronomy: The People Behind The Science (Pioneers in Science)
Sky & Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas
Minding the Heavens: The Story of our Discovery of the Milky Way
particles from Saturn’s magnetosphere synthesizes complex organic materials in the moon’s upper atmosphere, creating the everlasting smog that perpetually shrouds its face. Slowly however, these particles drift toward the surface and settle as a light organic snow, over time building up into vast deposits. Probably, sedimentary layers of these deposits exist and are subject to erosion by methane rainfall and flowing channels of liquid runoff. At this point, the genesis of terrestrial and Titanian
layer as well as one of dark and very hot clouds, probably composed of vanadium and titanium oxides, although complex organic compounds of the type known as tholins are also a possibility. But the most surprising thing is the finding that it displays a comet-like tail some 124,000 miles (200,000 km) long. It is, in fact, slowly evaporating away into space. But it is not expected to disappear completely. Eventually, the atmosphere will all be swept away by the stellar wind, leaving something very
that were supposed to comprise the �planet’s dark regions that at an earlier time were mistaken for seas and other bodies of water. The light and dark areas are just regions that have rocks of a different hue. Nothing stranger than that! Some of the issues and alleged evidence, past and recent, as well as the odd stories (also recent as well as ancient) that have been proposed in connection with Martian life were discussed in my Weird Astronomy and will not be repeated here, although some more
some sort of internal barrier to heat deep within has been suggested. Alternatively, the core temperature may have been depleted and most of its primordial heat expelled when the planet was struck by the same giant impactor that literally knocked it on its side. Curiously, although the rotational axis of Uranus is so strongly tilted, its magnetic field is not. Prior to the Voyager encounter in 1986, astronomers assumed that the magnetic field would more or less align with the rotational axis and
take a little time to speak about one very odd group of bodies originating there. Although not strictly speaking “worlds”, they are in their way, “weird” enough to deserve mention and really take us from one extreme of Solar-System distance represented by the Oort cloud to the absolute opposite. The objects to which I am referring are the comets collectively known as sungrazers. The name tells us the nature of their common characteristic; very, very close approaches to the Sun. Since 1996, the
