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Today we have some exciting news from out there in the solar system [checks notes] er, excuse me, I guess I mean “in there” in the solar system, since today’s news concerns from the planet closest to the sun. Yet, even though it is first, Mercury is shockingly unknown compared to the other planets of the solar system. This past Friday (October 1st 2021), the joint ESA/JAXA space mission BepiColombo (which launched back in 2018) finally made it to the innermost world. Since 2018, the transfer module has been slaloming around Earth and Venus in order to make it to Mercury. Indeed, the mission is named after the brilliant Italian astrophysicist who first proposed interplanetary gravity assist maneuvers as a mechanism for altering the velocity and trajectory of interplanetary spacecraft. BepiColombo took the picture at the top of this post, a view of part of Mercury’s northern hemisphere taken at a distance of about 2,420 kilometers (1,500 miles) from the world.
In 2025, the spacecraft will deploy two orbiters to truly comprehensively map Mercury and attempt to unlock the mysteries of the planet’s ancient face. Mercury’s surface seems to be made of a very dark lava which has been bombarded by meteorites for the last several billion years. Although Mercury is dinky in volume (smaller than some of the solar system’s moons) it is quite dense and presumably contains a metallic core suitable for a much larger planet. Interestingly (albeit unsurprisingly, for anyone who lives here) the densest planet in the solar system is Earth!
Not since the end of the Messenger mission has Mercury been the thrilling center of attention in astronomy. I can hardly wait for subsequent discoveries about the fast, hot, tiny planet. Some of the secrets of the making of the solar system have been locked away on the little world, waiting billions of years for the right orbiter to come along.
Wow! It seems like just a few days ago I was talking about Ferrebeekeeper’s 10th anniversary, but I guess that was actually back at the beginning of April… back in the world before the quarantine. Anyway, in that long-ago post, I mentioned that Ferrebeekeeper’s 2000th blog entry is coming up (if you can believe it) and we would celebrate with some special posts, pageantry, and little treats. Boy I really failed to follow up on that, and now today’s post is already our 1999th…
But there is still plenty of time for a Ferrebeekeeper jamboree (“jamboreekeeper”?)! Let’s start the festivities today with a special gift for you: a free flounder PDF for coloring:
2020 Coloring Flounder with Invaders
If you don’t feel like downloading the PDF, there is the black and white drawing right up at the top of today’s post. It features a timely flounder for 2020–a big invader flounder with dead black eyes and a pitted lifeless surface of desiccated craters and impact marks. Upon the flounder are alien shock troops…or maybe cyborgs? (…or maybe they are more familiar political militia). Space seeds and mysterious cardioids float down from the night sky onto a writhing landscape of burning Gothic cloisters, ruined mechanized battle equipment, and little refugees (and wriggling, beached flatfish of course ).
In some ways, this chaotic picture is not what I wanted for a celebration (where is the lavish garden party flatfish PDF already?), but in other deeper ways it is perfect for this moment of international floundering. Anyhow, you didn’t really want to color more ribbons, jewels, and roses did you? Well maybe you actually don’t want to color at all, but if you do break out your pencils and crayons, send me a jpeg of your efforts at wayneferrebee@gmail.com and we will post a little disaster gallery! And, as always, keep tuning in! There is more excitement for our big MM celebration…or there will be, as soon as I dream it up…
Expanded-color image of Mercury’s 52-km Degas crater, showing an abundance of dark material (NASA)
Today brings interesting color themed news from outer space. The Messenger space craft (which was destroyed when it was deliberately crashed into Mercury in spring of 2015) spotted numerous mysterious dark spots on Mercury. Indeed the Messenger spacecraft probably now is a dark spot on Mercury. Apparently the small dense planet has a dark layer close beneath the surface. Asteroid impacts, volcanoes, space probe collisions, and other events which disturb the surface of the planet reveal this extremely dark black/gray layer.
Scientists have been analyzing the data from Messenger and it now seems that this black layer which is the color and texture of pencil lead is actually composed of…graphite, the same material as pencil lead! Apparently when Mercury formed (which featured strange geological processes unseen anywhere else in the solar system) a planet-sized ocean of lava covered the entire world. As Mercury cooled the heavier elements of this lava field crystallized and sank leaving the buoyant pure carbon at the top. This dark layer has been subsequently covered with ejecta, dust, and fragments, but any disruption shows the crystallized carbon is still there.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
There is a lot more data from Messenger left to analyze. I wonder what other surprises the closest planet to the sun still holds.
ferrebeekeeper 