Note: this topic is from 9/22/201. Thanks Duke C.I think this a duplicate, but just in case...
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Posted on 09/22/2010 2:02:28 PM PDT by Duke C.
This is an image of Mercury's tail obtained from combining a full day of data from a camera aboard the STEREO-A spacecraft. The reflected sunlight off the planet's surface results in a type of over-exposure that causes Mercury to appear much larger than its actual size. The tail-like structure extending anti-sunward from the planet is visible over several days and spans an angular size exceeding that of a full Moon in the night sky.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
Kewl!
uber cool
/s
If you hold the lens open on any camera and point it at a moving light, it will leave a trail...of light.
I wager there is life floating in that Hermetic cloud.
With ‘time’ moving quite faster in several ways.
Any atmosphere that Mercury may have had was boiled off and ablated long ago, due to its proximity to the sun. The main causes would have been heat and the solar wind. Also consider that Mercury is close enough to the sun where tidal lock limits the rotation. So this “comet tail” may well be any volatiles on the planet surface. Sodium was described in the article as one of the components, so any sodium content in the surface minerals is being released to the temperature and radiation flux. Other elements may be present as well, which would be revealed by spectroscopy.
On a related note, some planets were discovered, in close proximity to their stars, and having mass and compositions similar to Jupiter. These “hot giants”, with diameters maybe twice that of Jupiter (since gasses expand when heated), may not last long (I’m describing astronomical time scales) since their host star will likely ablate the atmosphere. What may mitigate that is if such a planet also has a strong magnetic field (liquid iron/nickel core, or metallic hydrogen like Jupiter’s), resulting in a “bow shock” shielding it from the solar wind (or whatever the equivalent term is in this case).
*ping*
UFO sign ?
Doesn’t sound like it.
thanks
I got the feeling that Mercury is going to be booted out of the planet club just like poor old Neptune or Pluto was a while back
Shades of Velikovsky!
Note: this topic is from 9/22/201. Thanks Duke C.I think this a duplicate, but just in case...
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Could be but alls I can recall was another article a while back about Venus showing its tail...
Yup, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mercury...
HMPFH! Beginning to look like everybody’s got a tail.
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