Happy Thought for Friday 19 November 2021

Have a Happy Thought: 

 

(Reminder: There’s still time to donate to the great cause of men’s health (mental and physical) by supporting Vaughan’s mo’ growth)

 

Each year, the Hubble space telescope does a “Grand Tour” of the giant planets of our solar system – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune – and sends back new spectacular images for us to gawk over. I present to you some of my faves from this year’s crop.

 

But before you get sucked into the beauty of the gas giants, don’t forget to go out between 8:30 and midnight tonight (Aotearoa time) to catch the partial lunar eclipse – aka “Blood Moon” – that’s shaping up to be pretty spectacular (it peaks at 10pm)! Also the moon will be right next to Matariki.

For anyone with cloudy skies, or outside of the eclipse visibility, NASA has a livestream going on for you to tune in to. 

 

Jupiter: The Great Red Spot is on beautiful display, but you can also see massive storms a few layers “northward”, in what scientists call “barges”, as they march across those upper bands of atmosphere.

Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), and M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)

 

 



Saturn: if you look closely at the “north pole” you can see that the storm shape is not a circle, it’s a hexagon! The shape of this **massive** storm comes from complex fluid dynamics and interaction between the main storm at the pole and lots of smaller storms at lower latitudes.

Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), and M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI)

 



Uranus: Spring is in the air! Or, in the upper atmosphere of the northern hemisphere, which is the super bright area seen here. We’re pretty sure the brightness comes from an interaction of ultraviolet light from the sun, and methane in Uranus’ upper atmosphere.

Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), and M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI)

 



Neptune: Trying to outstage Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, Neptune has a Great Dark Spot (upper left-ish). Since its discovery in 2018, this spot has been ‘migrating’ southward, but it seems to have decided to start heading back up north for this year. Neptune looks blue for the same reason that Uranus does – lots of methane in its upper atmosphere.

Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), and M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI)

 


Pluto:

Nah, just joking. Pluto’s not a gas giant, it’s not even a planet! (ooh, sick burn!)

But ok, here’s my favourite photo of Pluto’s “heart” – not from Hubble this year, but from New Horizons space probe in 2018:

Colorized infrared layer from "The Rich Color Variations of Pluto" (PIA19952). NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute / ZLDoyle

 

 

 

More about the eclipse:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/127014337/blood-micromoon-nz-sky-set-to-turn-red-for-longest-neartotal-lunar-eclipse-in-800-yea

 

More from the Hubble telescope:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/hubbles-grand-tour-of-the-outer-solar-system 

All of the images can be found at the link above, except for Pluto, which can be found here:

https://www.planetary.org/space-images/pluto-in-colorized-infrared

 

More about Saturn’s polar hexagon:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201006165740.htm

 

More about Neptune’s dark spot:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/dark-storm-on-neptune-reverses-direction-possibly-shedding-a-fragment

 

 


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