HTTP:: Bright Spot on Mercury Gets Close Up
--------
The third and final flyby that NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft performed around Mercury has revealed a new take on the innermost planet's mysterious bright spot, a feature that astronomers cannot explain yet. It was first discovered during the probe's second flyby, and experts have been hypothesizing on its origins ever since. The new photo was taken as MESSENGER flew 142 miles (228 kilometers) above the planet's surface, in an elegant, gravity-assist maneuver that would ensure its capture into Mercury's orbit in 2011, Space reports. A larger set of images was captured during the flyby, but some of them could not be downlinked right away on account of a minor data glitch. “We do have some new science from the flyby. We missed a little icing on the cake. What is important is that the spacecraft and the instruments are healthy. We're all working through this,†Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) expert and MESSENGER project scientist Ralph McNut!
t said yesterday. The bright spot got its third known image during the flight. It was photographed before by MESSENGER, with its Narrow Angle Camera, on October 6, 2008, and again by astronomer Ronald Dantowitz, who was using an Earth-based telescope. The recent image, while indeed revealing more details of the feature, is far from provi...
--------
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Bright-Spot-on-Mercury-Gets-Close-Up-123185.shtml
--------
This e-mail was sent by Experiment23 Inc., located in New York, NY
10163. To not receive further e-mails, please visit
http://help.pingie.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment