Put a Ring On It!

So if you haven't heard, the space probe Cassini is starting the end of it's mission around Saturn to head towards it's total and utter doom inside the atmosphere of Saturn. With that said though Cassini has brought us a beautiful close up view of Saturn's ring system, a view we really have never seen before of them! Though we will be saying good bye to Cassini, it's sending us some amazing information and images as it moves towards it's final days.

Please enjoy the photos and give em a share around! It really is an amazing sight to behold!

How did Earth get its name?

So it's time we get to our little blue marble in our little series about how Planets managed to snag the names that they have.

Photo of Earth taken by the Apollo 17 Crew

So Earth, unlike every other planet in our solar system, is the only planet in our system not to actually be named after a Roman god. We actually don't know whom actually coined the first use of naming our planet Earth, only that we have used it to name our planet for roughly 1000 years, but we do however have a history on the word itself. Earth is actually a combination of both English and German which essentially both mean Ground. So essentially we named our planet after the ground on which we stand on! I always found it semi-funny that we named our planet ground since it is mostly made up of water!

Bonus Video:
In spirit of talking about our home I'd like to share a short video from the National Geographic YouTube channel of the ISS showing some beautiful footage of our planet while it orbits around us

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Thanks for reading and keep your eyes on the night sky!

Naming of the Planets: Venus

As stated in my post before this regarding Mercury, many of the planets were quite viewable by the Romans back in the day when there was not much light pollution, but Venus stood out as one of the brightest and most beautiful stars in the night sky!

Photo of Venus in the visible spectrum

Venus to this day is still one of the more beautiful looking planets in our solar system, at least if you ask me! Though it has a certain deadly quality about it with it's run away green house effect, it has a certain beauty to it that I find mesmerizing so I only find it quite accurate that the Roman's named this gem after the Goddess of beauty!

Little fun fact about Venus, we actually originally thought it was going to be a marsh like planet, and around this time we had this theory you had so many movies about Venus pop out of Hollywood! Of course, after further study we came to realize just how wrong and dangerous of a planet it was, but the one thing it still held onto was it's beauty!

Hope you all are enjoying this little series on the planets names and keep your eyes on the night sky!

Space Meme Thursday!

I figured I would just do a fun little space Meme post every Thursday for a good chuckle! This week's is Voyager theme (Credit to my good friend for sharing it!)

Mercury Retrograde - What is it?

Hey everyone! So Mercury was in retrograde, but what does that mean exactly? Not to long ago a friend of mine linked me to a great video by Vox that explains the astronomical phenomenon. See the problem as explained in the video is that when you look it up, you get swarmed with a lot of astrology links but thankfully Vox explains the phenomenon.

What I love about this video is not only does it explain and show you how a retrograde works, it also goes into a bit of the history of it as well! I'd highly recommend subscribing to this channel, they have some really awesome videos on it!

That's all for now, keep your eyes on the night sky everyone!

How Planet's Got Their Names: Mercury Edition

Welcome to the first part of a small series of posts I am doing on how the planets in our solar system got their names. This week I'll be looking at the planet closest to the sun, Mercury!

Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun

See it all goes back to Roman times as all the planets are named after the Roman gods. Back then, there was not as much light given off by our population centers as there is now so it was very easy to see all the stars and planets, and because of this they were aware of seven of the planets in the night sky.

Mercury in Roman mythology was the messenger of all the gods (Or Hermes in Greek mythology) known for his speed. So Mercury was quickly associated with this simply because it traversed the night sky the fastest!

Hope you enjoyed the short and simple story around how Mercury got it's name. Next week Venus! Keep your eyes on the sky everyone.

Titan, A Lunar Gem

So in keeping with the last post I want to touch on another special feature of our solar system that is related to Saturn, and that is it's moon Titan! Titan is unique in our solar system for a multitude of reasons, most of which you cannot find anywhere else actually in the system!

True colour image of Titan taken by Cassini

So what makes Titan unique? Well for starters it is the only moon in our solar system with such a thick stable atmosphere, and on top of that it is the only atmosphere aside from earth that is composed largely of Nitrogen! However, the orange haze that is responsible for what we see is due to a hydrocarbons in it's upper atmosphere reacting to the suns ultraviolet light. That orange smog though blocks a lot of the suns light, making Titan only able to receive about 0.1% sunlight to it's surface compared to what Earth gets. This makes the planet nice and chilly, but at the same time keeps the a lot of the heat that it does get through in which is what allows some more of the unique characteristics of this moon to exist!

An infrared image of Titan's surface showing the suns energy reflecting off one of it's lakes.

So as the image above shows, Titan has stable bodies of liquid on it's surface, composing lakes, rivers and seas! This is the only other celestial body on our solar system that we are currently aware of that has stable bodies of liquid on it's surface! This is however not water, but predominately methane seas, but also may contain things such as propane and ethane that feed into these rivers and lakes from underground! These lakes and rivers as well have much of a similar effect there as they do here when it comes to erosion of the land mass, but scientists believe that the process for it takes much longer on Titan then it does here on Earth. From our studies of Titan though so far, most of these rivers and lakes are found in the north and south poles of the planet, where they are shielded and protected from the sun far more then the equatorial region where it is much drier of a place with a few oasis's of lakes spot the desert landscape (Likely fed by underground sources). So not only does Titan have a unique thick atmosphere it also has stable bodies of liquid and guess what comes with that? Well Titan has weather much like here! That's right Titan get's rain and storms like here on earth, but rather then it raining water, it rains Methane. What else could it possibly have to make it more unique then it already is?

A near infrared image of Tortola Facula, a possible Cryovolcano

That's right, Titan might have volcanoes! Not just any kind of volcano though, but cyrovolcanoes. What is a cyrovolcano? Well unlike Earth, Titan's surface is made up of both rocky material and ice and it's cyrovolcanos rather then spewing out molten rock, erupt a composition of water and ammonia! So why is this important? Well you see the ammonia that with that water actually allows it to stay a liquid underground a far colder temperatures then it normally would, bringing theory that under the crust of Titan's surface is a liquid ocean of water and ammonia. So now not only is it possible that there is liquid water under it's surface, but the moon is also geologically active! So what could possibly get better about this place?

Well Titan is now heavily suspect of containing a form of methane-based life form! There is however no confirmed information about this, but many theories have surface on what this life would be like. Likely, it would be more microbial life existing in it's methane lakes. Also however, Titan contains much of the same organic material that was eventually jump started in creating a lot of the life here on Earth! Though that life would not be able to survive on the surface if it was more similar to ours, it is likely that it could survive in the possible ammonia-water ocean beneath it's surface! To us that would be inhospitable of an environment by Earth standards, it is still hospitable enough for life to none the less exist and grow in it!

The suspected interior of Titan

So hopefully you've come out of this is a greater understanding on why Titan is such a gem of our solar system. We really do live in a marvelous solar system and it is fascinating just learning about what is right next door to us! With that I hope to keep sharing more about our home system in the weeks to come and helps everyone to learn more about the cosmos!

Thank you for reading, share it with your friends and keep your eyes on the night sky.