1/3 the distance from the Sun than Earth, it should be no surprise that a day on Mercury is a real scorcher with temperatures soaring over 400 ºC. But in addition to its solar proximity it also has an extremely slow rotation: a single day on Mercury is 58.6 Earth days long… and you thought your Mondays lasted forever!
To be even more precise, for every 2 Mercury years, 3 Mercury days pass — a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, caused by the planet’s varying elliptical orbit. (This also makes for some interesting motions of the Sun in Mercury’s sky.)
To illustrate this, UK’s The Open University has published a new video in their 60 Second Adventures in Astronomy series… check it out above (and see more of their excellent and amusing animations here.)
Video: The Open University. Narrated by David Mitchell.
Many people think of the James Webb Space Telescope as a sort of Hubble 2.…
On November 26th, 2018, NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight)…
Black holes are incredible powerhouses, but they might generate even more energy thanks to an…
According to the United Nations, the world produces about 430 million metric tons (267 U.S.…
As we saw with JWST, it's difficult and expensive to launch large telescope apertures, relying…
Voyager 1 was launched waaaaaay back in 1977. I would have been 4 years old…