“Venus At Night In Infrared From Akatsuki” Is The NASA Astronomy Picture Of The Day Of Today, January

“Venus At Night In Infrared From Akatsuki” Is The NASA Astronomy Picture Of The Day Of Today, January

“Venus at Night in Infrared from Akatsuki” Is the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day of today, January 30, 2018

More Posts from Venusearthpassage and Others

10 years ago
When It Landed On Venus On December 15th, 1970, Venera 7 became The First Spacecraft To Achieve A Soft-landing

When it landed on Venus on December 15th, 1970, Venera 7 became the first spacecraft to achieve a soft-landing on another planet. Only able to transmit surface data back to Earth for 23 minutes due to signal degradation, it was determined by Venera 7’s transmission that the atmosphere of Venus is composed 97% of carbon dioxide, with a temperature reading of 887°F (475°C).

5 years ago
Solar System
Solar System
Solar System
Solar System
Solar System
Solar System
Solar System
Solar System
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Solar System

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7 years ago
So NASA Won The Internet Today…

So NASA won the internet today…

7 years ago

Could we create dark matter?

85% of the matter in our universe is a mystery. We don’t know what it’s made of, which is why we call it dark matter. But we know it’s out there because we can observe its gravitational attraction on galaxies and other celestial objects. 

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We’ve yet to directly observe dark matter, but scientists theorize that we may actually be able to create it in the most powerful particle collider in the world. That’s the 27 kilometer-long Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, in Geneva, Switzerland.

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So how would that work? In the LHC, two proton beams move in opposite directions and are accelerated to near the speed of light. At four collision points, the beams cross and protons smash into each other.

Could We Create Dark Matter?

Protons are made of much smaller components called quarks and gluons. 

Could We Create Dark Matter?

In most ordinary collisions, the two protons pass through each other without any significant outcome.

Could We Create Dark Matter?

However, in about one in a million collisions, two components hit each other so violently, that most of the collision energy is set free producing thousands of new particles. 

Could We Create Dark Matter?

It’s only in these collisions that very massive particles, like the theorized dark matter, can be produced.

Could We Create Dark Matter?

So it takes quadrillions of collisions combined with theoretical models to even start to look for dark matter. That’s what the LHC is currently doing. By generating a mountain of data, scientists at CERN are hoping to find more tiny bumps in graphs that will provide evidence for yet unknown particles, like dark matter. Or maybe what they’ll find won’t be dark matter, but something else that would reshape our understanding of how the universe works entirely. 

And that’s part of the fun at this point. We have no idea what they’re going to find.

From the TED-Ed Lesson Could we create dark matter? - Rolf Landua

Animation by Lazy Chief

7 years ago

Ten Interesting facts about Venus

As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been made sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the “morning star” and “evening star”. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC.

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Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It has the longest rotation period (243 days) of any planet in the Solar System and rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets.

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It does not have any natural satellites. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.

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It is the second-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6 – bright enough to cast shadows at night and, rarely, visible to the naked eye in broad daylight.

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Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth’s “sister planet” because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition.

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It is radically different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet’s surface is 92 times that of Earth, or roughly the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) underwater on Earth. Venus is by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a mean surface temperature of 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F), even though Mercury is closer to the Sun.

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As the closest planet to Earth, Venus has been a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth visited by a spacecraft (Mariner 2 in 1962), and the first to be successfully landed on (by Venera 7 in 1970). Venus’s thick clouds render observation of its surface impossible in visible light, and the first detailed maps did not emerge until the arrival of the Magellan orbiter in 1991. Plans have been proposed for rovers or more complex missions, but they are hindered by Venus’s hostile surface conditions.

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Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it has 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km (62 mi) across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth is the Big Island of Hawaii. This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older. Earth’s oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about 100 million years, whereas the Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600 million years old.

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As it orbits the Sun, Venus displays phases like those of the Moon in a telescopic view. The planet appears as a small and “full” disc when it is on the opposite side of the Sun (at superior conjunction). Venus shows a larger disc and “quarter phase” at its maximum elongations from the Sun, and appears its brightest in the night sky. The planet presents a much larger thin “crescent” in telescopic views as it passes along the near side between Earth and the Sun. Venus displays its largest size and “new phase” when it is between Earth and the Sun (at inferior conjunction). Its atmosphere is visible through telescopes by the halo of sunlight refracted around it.

Ten Interesting Facts About Venus

The Venusian orbit is slightly inclined relative to Earth’s orbit; thus, when the planet passes between Earth and the Sun, it usually does not cross the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur when the planet’s inferior conjunction coincides with its presence in the plane of Earth’s orbit. Transits of Venus occur in cycles of 243 years with the current pattern of transits being pairs of transits separated by eight years, at intervals of about 105.5 years or 121.5 years—a pattern first discovered in 1639 by the English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks.

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In 1967, Venera 4 found Venus’s magnetic field to be much weaker than that of Earth. This magnetic field is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and the solar wind, rather than by an internal dynamo as in the Earth’s core. Venus’s small induced magnetosphere provides negligible protection to the atmosphere against cosmic radiation.

source

images: Mattias Malmer/NASA/JPL, Peter Barvoets,  Soviet Planetary Exploration Program, NSSDC, Marc Lecleire, ESA, C. Carreau,

7 years ago
A Clockwork Rover For Venus

A Clockwork Rover for Venus

A good watch can take a beating and keep on ticking. With the right parts, can a rover do the same on a planet like Venus?

A concept inspired by clockwork computers and World War I tanks could one day help us find out. The design is being explored at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE) is funded for study by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program. The program offers small grants to develop early stage technology, allowing engineers to work out their ideas.

AREE was first proposed in 2015 by Jonathan Sauder, a mechatronics engineer at JPL. He was inspired by mechanical computers, which use levers and gears to make calculations rather than electronics.

By avoiding electronics, a rover might be able to better explore Venus. The planet’s hellish atmosphere creates pressures that would crush most submarines. Its average surface temperature is 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius), high enough to melt lead.

Steampunk computing

Mechanical computers have been used throughout history, most often as mathematical tools like adding machines. The most famous might be Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, a 19th century invention for calculating algebraic equations. The oldest known is the Antikythera mechanism, a device used by ancient Greeks to predict astronomical phenomena like eclipses.

Mechanical computers were also developed as works of art. For hundreds of years, clockwork mechanisms were used to create automatons for wealthy patrons. In the 1770s, a Swiss watchmaker named Pierre Jaquet-Droz created “The Writer,” an automaton that could be programmed to write any combination of letters.

Sauder said these analog technologies could help where electronics typically fail. In extreme environments like the surface of Venus, most electronics will melt in high temperatures or be corroded by sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.

“Venus is too inhospitable for kind of complex control systems you have on a Mars rover,” Sauder said. “But with a fully mechanical rover, you might be able to survive as long as a year.”

Wind turbines in the center of the rover would power these computers, allowing it to flip upside down and keep running. But the planet’s environment would offer plenty of challenges.

The extreme planet

No spacecraft has survived the Venusian surface for more than a couple hours.

Venus’ last visitors were the Soviet Venera and Vega landers. In the 1970s and 1980s, they sent back a handful of images that revealed a craggy, gas-choked world.

“When you think of something as extreme as Venus, you want to think really out there,” said Evan Hilgemann, a JPL engineer working on high temperature designs for AREE. “It’s an environment we don’t know much about beyond what we’ve seen in Soviet-era images.”

Sauder and Hilgemann are preparing to bake mechanical prototypes, allowing them to study how thermal expansion could affect their moving parts. Some components of the Soviet landers had actually been designed with this heat expansion in mind: their parts wouldn’t work properly until they were heated to Venusian temperatures.

Tank treads for Venus

AREE includes a number of other innovative design choices.

Mobility is one challenge, considering there are so many unknowns about the Venusian surface. Sauder’s original idea was inspired by the “Strandbeests” created by Dutch artist Theo Jansen. These spider-like structures have spindly legs that can carry their bulk across beaches, powered solely by wind.

Ultimately, they seemed too unstable for rocky terrain. Sauder started looking at World War I tank treads as an alternative. These were built to roll over trenches and craters.

Another problem will be communications. Without electronics, how would you transmit science data? Current plans are inspired by another age-old technology: Morse code.

An orbiting spacecraft could ping the rover using radar. The rover would have a radar target, which if shaped correctly, would act like “stealth technology in reverse,” Sauder said. Stealth planes have special shapes that disperse radar signals; Sauder is exploring how to shape these targets to brightly reflect signals instead. Adding a rotating shutter in front of the radar target would allow the rover to turn the bright, reflected spot on and off, communicating much like signal lamps on Navy ships.

Now in its second phase of NIAC development, the JPL team is selecting parts of the AREE concept to be refined and prototyped. Team members hope to flesh out a rover concept that will eventually be able to study the geology of Venus and perhaps drill a few samples.

7 years ago
Computer-generated Image Of The Surface Of Venus Using Radar Data Collected From The Magellan Spacecraft

Computer-generated image of the surface of Venus using radar data collected from the Magellan spacecraft [1024 × 1024]

10 years ago
Pioneer Venus Artwork

Pioneer Venus Artwork

Artist’s concept of Pioneer Venus mission approaching the planet.

During a 14-year orbit of Venus, Pioneer Venus 1 used radar to map the surface at a resolution of 75 km (47 miles). It found the planet to be generally smoother than Earth, though with a mountain higher than Mt. Everest and a chasm deeper than the Grand Canyon. The orbiter also found Venus to be more spherical than Earth, consistent with the planet’s much slower rotation rate (one Venus day equals 243 Earth days). It confirmed that Venus has little, if any, magnetic field and found the clouds to consist mainly of sulfuric acid. Measurements of this chemical’s decline in the atmosphere over the course of the mission suggested that the spacecraft arrived soon after a large volcanic eruption, which may also account for the prodigious lightning it observed.

After a course correction on 16 August 1978, Pioneer Venus 2 released the 1.5-m diameter large probe on 16 November 1978, at about 11.1 million km from the planet. Four days later, the bus released the three small probes while 9.3 million km from Venus. All five components reached the Venusian atmosphere on 9 December 1978, with the large probe entering first.

Data from the probes indicated that between 10 and 50 km, there is almost no convection in the Venusian atmosphere. Below a haze layer at 30 km, the atmosphere appears to be relatively clear. Amazingly, two of three probes survived the hard impact. The so-called Day Probe transmitted data from the surface for 67.5 minutes before succumbing to the high temperatures and power depletion.

Credit: NASA/Rick Guidice

7 years ago
Venera
Venera
Venera
Venera

Venera

The Venera series space probes were developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather data from Venus, Venera being the Russian name for Venus. As with some of the Soviet Union’s other planetary probes, the later versions were launched in pairs with a second vehicle being launched soon after the first of the pair.

Ten probes from the Venera series successfully landed on Venus and transmitted data from the surface of Venus, including the two Vega program and Venera-Halley probes. In addition, thirteen Venera probes successfully transmitted data from the atmosphere of Venus.

Among the other results, probes of the series became the first human-made devices to enter the atmosphere of another planet (Venera 4 on October 18, 1967), to make a soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 on December 15, 1970), to return images from the planetary surface (Venera 9 on June 8, 1975), and to perform high-resolution radar mapping studies of Venus (Venera 15 on June 2, 1983). The later probes in the Venera series successfully carried out their mission, providing the first direct observations of the surface of Venus. Since the surface conditions on Venus are extreme, the probes only survived on the surface for durations varying between 23 minutes (initial probes) up to.

source

7 years ago
Sequence Of Venus Atmosphere Images Taken By The Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) During The Venus Express

Sequence of Venus atmosphere images taken by the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) during the Venus Express orbit in July 2007. The view shows the southern hemisphere of the planet.

Credit: ESA/MPS/DLR/IDA

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