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Pictures of the day - December 8, 2018

Insight B System - Sixth Planet’s (Insight B-VI) Major Moons

Three large terrestrial-sized moons orbit Insight B-VI, all of them being roughly halfway between the size of Mars and Venus. Lunar Stats Below.

Insight B-VI-M2 (Second Moon) Radius = 4,567.71 km (0.72 x Earth) Mass = 0.24 Earth Masses Atmosphere = 0.13 Atmospheres/ Ammonia, Sulfur Dioxide, Methane, and Carbon Dioxide

Insight B-VI-M3 (Third Moon) Radius = 5,672.06 km (0.89 x Earth) Mass = 0.31 Earth Masses Atmosphere = 0.23 Atmospheres/ Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Acetylene

Insight B-VI-M4 (Fourth moon) Radius = 5,786.11 km (0.91 x Earth) Mass = 0.40 Earth Masses Atmosphere = 0.01 Atmospheres/ Methane, Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen

High Resolution Pictures

All Three Major Moons

Insight B-VI-M2 (Second Moon)

insight B-VI-M3 (Third Moon)

Insight B-VI-M4 (Fourth Moon)

Pacman Nebula

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Neptune ♆

On this day in 1846 was discovered the planet Neptune.

The ice giant Neptune was the first planet located through mathematical predictions rather than through regular observations of the sky. (Galileo had recorded it as a fixed star during observations with his small telescope in 1612 and 1613.) When Uranus didn’t travel exactly as astronomers expected it to, a French mathematician, Urbain Joseph Le Verrier, proposed the position and mass of another as yet unknown planet that could cause the observed changes to Uranus’ orbit. After being ignored by French astronomers, Le Verrier sent his predictions to Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin Observatory, who found Neptune on his first night of searching in 1846. Seventeen days later, its largest moon, Triton, was also discovered.

Neptune is invisible to the naked eye because of its extreme distance from Earth. Interestingly, the highly eccentric orbit of the dwarf planet Pluto brings Pluto inside Neptune’s orbit for a 20-year period out of every 248 Earth years. Pluto can never crash into Neptune, though, because for every three laps Neptune takes around the Sun, Pluto makes two. This repeating pattern prevents close approaches of the two bodies.

Nearly 4.5 billion kilometers (2.8 billion miles) from the Sun, Neptune orbits the Sun once every 165 years. 

Uranus’ blue-green color is also the result of atmospheric methane, but Neptune is a more vivid, brighter blue, so there must be an unknown component that causes the more intense color. 

Despite its great distance and low energy input from the Sun, Neptune’s winds can be three times stronger than Jupiter’s and nine times stronger than Earth’s.

Winds on Neptune travel faster than the speed of sound.

In 1989, Voyager 2 tracked a large, oval-shaped, dark storm in Neptune’s southern hemisphere. This “Great Dark Spot” was large enough to contain the entire Earth.

Neptune has five known rings. Voyager 2’s observations confirmed that these unusual rings are not uniform but have four thick regions (clumps of dust) called arcs. The rings are thought to be relatively young and short-lived.

Neptune has 14 known moons, six of which were discovered by Voyager 2.

Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, orbits the planet in the opposite direction compared with the rest of the moons, suggesting that it may have been captured by Neptune in the distant past. 

To know more about the planet Neptune click here and here.

Images credit: NASA/JPL- Caltech (some images processed by Kevin M. Gill)

Picture of the day - December 12, 2018

Moon rise over Insight B-V. The second sun is also visible in this pic.

Picture of the Day - January 4, 2019

A hot desert-world with exotic land-based life.

Space Engine System ID: RS 5613-2267-7-1038156-494 A3 to visit the world in Space Engine.

Picture of the day - December 7, 2018

Insight B-VI viewed from the surface of its 4th moon.

Pictures of the day - December 2, 2018

Insight System - Third Planet orbiting Insight B (Insight B-III)

Insight B-III is the giant of the Insight System, being the most massive planet of both of the system’s stars. It is a massive gas giant the nears the boundary with a brown dwarf at 11.75 Jupiter masses. The planet has an active atmosphere from both solar heating and internally released heat and has an average atmospheric temperature of 147 F.

The planet orbits the sun at an average distance of 0.21 AU, and completes an orbit once every 41.33 days. The planet is not quite tidally locked with a rotational rate of 41.67 days vs its orbital period of 41.33 days. As a result, a solar day on the planet lasts 14.00 Earth years.

No major satellites orbit the planet; however, 30 asteroid-like irregular satellites orbit the planet.

Note the star visible in the last picture is the Insight System’s primary star Insight A. Viewed from the gas giant, the star shines with an average magnitude of -17.29, bright enough that it illuminates the dark side of objects to approximately the same level of lighting as the average living room.

High Resolution Pictures

Insight B-III

Polar View

Crescent View

Equatorial Cloud Bands

Nearby asteroid moon

Distant asteroid moon

September 30, 2016: Views of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko captured by the Rosetta probe during the spacecraft’s final descent.

(ESA)

Green Desert

Picture of the Day - November 2, 2018

Weird green desert-world rich in life, but lacking any bodies of surface liquids. Planet has a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, average surface temperature of 73°F on the day side and is tidally locked to the sun.