Astronomy Picture of the Day - MESSENGER's Last Day on Mercury

NASA ^ | 1 May, 2025 | Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ. APL, Arizona State Univ., CIW

[MtnClimber]

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[MtnClimber]

[No name given]

Interesting.

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

[Repeal The 17th]

Our moon...nothing there, why should we go back?
Venus...nothing there, why should we go back?
Mars...nothing there, why should we go back?
Mercury...nothing there, why should we go back?

[Dan in Wichita]

If you had been alive in 1492, you would have warned Christopher Columbus not to sail off into the ocean blue because the world is flat and he would fall off.

[telescope115]

A question on Jeopardy last night was “What’s the hottest planet in the Solar System “? Nobody got it. It was Venus, of course, and nobody got it.

[HandyDandy]

Simply amazing. And to think, when I was born there were water canals crisscrossing Mars and our Moon was made of cheese!

[fidelis]

Simply amazing. And to think, when I was born there were water canals crisscrossing Mars and our Moon was made of cheese!

Yes, and since then the canals have been filled in and the cheese moon has moulded into gray dust. I guess that's progress for you.

[fidelis]

I’m starting to get the feeling that, except for the gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, every planet, moon, or asteroid out there except ours resembles nothing more spectacular than a well-worn golf ball.

[HandyDandy]

We are only as good as our instruments.

[SkyDancer]

Hah, it’s flat just like Earth according to the Flat Earth Society. I can prove an inflated basketball is flat too.

[Fledermaus]

And the Earth was the center of the universe

[cuban leaf]

If you had been alive in 1492, you would have warned Christopher Columbus not to sail off into the ocean blue because the world is flat and he would fall off.

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Well, if they had the tech we have today I’d have told him to send robots and AI. No need to sacrifice human lives on something hardware and software can do.

Personally, I think the only humans that will ever set foot on Mars will be the rich vacationers that can afford to go there - after robots build the facility.

[cuban leaf]

What about Jupiter?

[cuban leaf]

I see it as a bit of a trick question. Since jupiter doesn’t have a surface as we think of it, you can go all the way down to it’s core, where the temp can be 40,000 degrees F

https://www.telescopenerd.com/celestial-objects/jupiter.htm

[Dan in Wichita]

We won’t live long enough to see it, but I suspect Mars and beyond will not be simply a destination for rich vacationers.

[piasa]

Europa and Ganymede are pretty interesting.

[MikelTackNailer]

And to think, when I was born there were water canals crisscrossing Mars and our Moon was made of cheese!

You think YOU had to live with disappointment.

[Larry Lucido]

with the spacecraft impacting the surface at nearly 4 kilometers per second (over 8,700 miles per hour) and creating a new crater about 16 meters (52 feet) in diameter.

*****

And thereby destroying all dinosaur life on Mercury.