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| Sunday, 7 November 2004 |
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Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Mercury and Venus We learned about the family of planets in our Galaxy, the Milky Way recently in Space Station. Today let's take a brief look at two planets that are members of this family Mercury and Venus which are Earth-like or terrestrial planets. Mercury - Sun's closest neighbour
Mercury which is nearest to the Sun may also be the smallest true planet. In fact it is smaller than the Earth, with a diameter of 4,850 km (3,015 miles), one third the size of Earth. It is 58,000,000 km (36,000,000 miles) away from the Sun and orbits it in 87-97 days. As Mercury lies so close to the Sun its surface gets very hot by day. If you place a piece of lead there, it would melt in no time. Mercury has no atmosphere to store heat so the nights are very cold. It's cool enough to turn oxygen gas into liquid oxygen. Mercury's year is only 88 Earth days long.Mercury is barren and rocky. It has mountains and craters like those on the Moon. Highest mountain peaks are 2 1/2 km(1 1/2 miles) above the lowest land. It has no atmosphere and no Moons.Temperature at daytime is 400 celsius and at night - 200 celsius. Venus - the Morning Star
Venus is bright at dawn and at sunset, and people often call it the Morning Star or Evening star. The second planet from the Sun, it is not much smaller than the Earth with a diameter of 12,140 km (7,545 miles) but it differs from Earth in many ways. It has a shorter year but a far longer day, because it spins so slowly. (Planets spin as they orbit around the Sun). Venus has a dense atmosphere which is mainly carbon dioxide gas. This atmosphere works like a greenhouse roof. That is, it lets in the Sun's heat but stops much of it escaping. Many space probes have revealed interesting facts about Venus. ***** Saturn's Moon - Titan
To travel the 2.1 billion kilometres (1.3 billion miles) the image bearing signal from Cassini - Huygens takes about one hour and 14 minutes, say officials. Titan Saturn's moon is shown in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths in this image released by NASA/JPL/ Space Science Institute on October 27. It was taken by Cassini's imaging science subsystem and is constructed from four images acquired through different colour filters. Red and green colours represent infrared wavelengths and show areas where atmospheric methane absorbs light. ***** Latest module in space probes
The Cupola was shipped to the States recently from Alenia Spazio in Turin, Italy. The NASA image released on October 8 shows the space station Processing Facility workers checking the Cupola. |
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The US-European spacecraft Cassini Huygens beamed to Earth the first of
some 500 images of Saturn's Moon Titan late Tuesday last week, after a
historic flyby, skimming its hazy atmosphere according to NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
Kennedy Space Center, USA - A dome shaped module with seven windows,
the Cupola will give astronauts a panoramic view for observing many
operations outside the orbiting complex during space probes. It will
provide external observation capabilities during spacewalks, docking
operations and hardware surveys, for Earth and celestial studies.
