Uranus' fifth-largest moon is Miranda. It's known for its surface features, and new research suggests that a subsurface ocean could be shaping the moon's surface. Image Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech
The Solar System’s hundreds of moons are like puzzle pieces. Together, they make a picture of all the forces that can create and modify them and the forces that shape our Solar System. One of them is Miranda, one of 28 known moons that orbit the ice giant Uranus. Miranda is its smallest major moon, at 471 km in diameter.
New research shows that this relatively small, distant moon may be hiding something: a subsurface ocean.
New Horizon's July 2015 flyby of Pluto captured this iconic image of the heart-shaped region called Tombaugh Regio. Credit:
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. For decades, not much detail was known about the erstwhile planet. We assumed it was a frozen, dormant world.
Dust-covered, boulder-strewn landscape on the smaller of the two lobes of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken from a distance of 5 miles (8 km). Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
We’ve subsisted for months on morsels of information coming from ESA’s mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Now, a series of scientific papers in journal Science offers a much more complete, if preliminary, look at Rosetta’s comet. And what a wonderful and complex world it is.
Scientists have defined 19 regions on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s nucleus according to terrain and named for Egyptian deities like Imhotep, Aten and Hathor. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS/OSIRIS Team/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO /INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
Each of the papers describes a different aspect of the comet from the size and density of dust particles jetting from the nucleus, organic materials found on its surface and the diverse geology of its bizarre landscapes. Surprises include finding no firm evidence yet of ice on the comet’s nucleus. There’s no question water and other ices compose much of 67P’s 10 billion ton mass, but much of it’s buried under a thick layer of dust.
Despite its solid appearance, 67P is highly porous with a density similar to wood or cork and orbited by a cloud of approximately 100,000 “grains” of material larger than 2 inches (5 cm) across stranded there after the comet’s previous perihelion passage. Thousands of tiny comet-lets! Continue reading “Latest Research Reveals a Bizarre and Vibrant Rosetta’s Comet”
