Naming Features on Mercury

With NASA's recent MESSENGER mission to Mercury, many new surface features have been discovered. These new features were discovered as a result of MESSENGER's imaging setup, which is far more advanced than any previous exploration vehicle, allowing for even more detailed views of Mercury's surface. With these newly discovered features, however, comes a need for new names. Typically, when naming features on planets, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) follows a theme or common idea to name similar features. On Mercury, the IAU originally used "great works of archtitecture" to name ridges and valleys, such as Pantheon Fossae. The new naming scheme will be using names of deceased musicians, authors, and artists. The above picture shows the names and locations of some of the newly named features.

Image courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.

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NEAF WebCast

This year, Cloudy Nights will be running a live webcast from the Northeast Astronomy Forum (NEAF). NEAF is an annual astronomy show held in In order to view the live webcast, one must be a registered member of the Cloudy Nights Web Forum. Registration is quick and easy. Once registered, you can e-mail in questions to be answered by such astronomy celebrities as Alan Traino, Mike Bieler of Astronomics / Cloudy Nights, Al and David Nagler of Tele Vue, Roland Christen of Astro-Physics, and Scott Horstman of Backyard Observatories.

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Carnival of Space #51

Carnival of Space #51 is up at Dr. Ian O'Neill's astroengine.com. Enjoy!

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Hubble Images Show Violent Mergers

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has recently provided us with 59 new images showing not the typical placid galactic images, but rather, images of immense galactic violence. Galactic mergers are quite a rare sight, but by looking at distant galaxies, astronomers can see mergers that occurred millions of years ago, when galaxies were much closer together. Since the light from these mergers takes millions of years to reach us, its almost as if we can look "back in time" to view these ancient, violent mergers. Astronomers at NASA can use the Hubble Space Telescope to image these amazingly intricate colliding galaxies.

These images are more than just beautiful views of galaxies, however. These images lend new insights into how the universe was when it was young. They show a much more violent early universe, where galaxies merged much more frequently. It is important to note, however, that these galactic mergers are nothing for us to worry about. These mergers take monumental amounts of time to occur, typically on the order of hundreds of millions of years. Also, the stars in galaxies are so spread out that there is an extremely slim chance of collisions. Our galaxy, in fact, may be the product of past mergers. Galactic mergers can even revitalize old galaxies, giving them a burst of star formation. The image below is a compilation of some of these images.

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Images courtesy of NASA, ESA, A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

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Carnival of Space #49

Carnival of Space # 49 is ready at Will Gater's blog. Enjoy!

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Water on Mars?

Scientists and astronomers may have found the secret to detecting water on Mars. The method involves a radar-based technique, and may be ready for future missions to Mars within a few years. By using this radar-like technique, scientists can probe deep into the Martian surface, without the need to actually do any digging. Detecting water on Mars would be a major milestone in the study of Mars' early geographical history, and could lend insights into our own planets past and future. The following is a demonstration of such a system.

Just kidding...

Happy April Fool's Day!!

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