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With active geysers coating its surface with dazzlingly bright ice crystals, Saturn’s large moon Enceladus is one of the most enigmatic worlds in our solar system. Underlying this activity are numerous further discoveries by the Cassini spacecraft, tantalizing us with evidence that Enceladus harbors a subsurface ocean of liquid water. Enceladus is thus newly realized as a forefront candidate among potentially habitable ocean worlds in our own solar system, although it is only one of a family of icy moons orbiting the giant ringed planet, each with its own story. As a new volume in the Space Science Series, Enceladus and the Icy Moons of Saturn brings together nearly eighty of the world’s...
Complete color global maps and high-resolution mosaics of Jupiter's four large moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – are compiled for the first time in this important atlas. The satellites are revealed as four visually striking and geologically diverse planetary bodies: Io's volcanic lavas and plumes and towering mountains; Europa's fissured ice surface; the craters, fractures and polar caps of Ganymede; and the giant impact basins, desiccated plains and icy pinnacles of Callisto. Featuring images taken from the recent Galileo mission, this atlas is a comprehensive mapping reference guide for researchers. It contains 65 global and regional maps, nearly 250 high-resolution mosaics, and images taken at resolutions from 500 meters to as high as 6 meters.
This book is an essential reference volume that surveys tectonic landforms on solid bodies throughout the Solar System.
Predicted long ago to be present on the surface of planetary bodies by theoreticians and recently shown by interplanetary spacecraft and ground- based instruments to be ubiquitous in the Solar System, ices in a broad sense have become an extremely important subject in planetary research. Ices found on objects formed in the remote parts of the Solar System contain a message about the composition and mode of formation of our planetary system. There are also objects that contain icy materials that bear signatures of past events on a geological timescale. Their study is one of the best means of inquiring about the origins, accessing the past and anticipating the future of our Solar System. The r...
Written by expert researchers, this book covers all the major aspects of research in Jupiter's moon Io, from the interior to its space environment. Io is one of the Solar System’s most exotic satellites. The book discusses Io's interior, geology, atmosphere, and, in particular, its active volcanism, which was discovered from observations by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1979, confirming a possibility suggested from theoretical studies based on Io’s orbit. Our knowledge of Io’s volcanism, composition, and space environment was significantly increased as a result of observations by other spacecrafts, including Galileo. More than a decade after the 1st edition, “Io After Galileo”, this ...
Extensively revised and updated, this new edition of David A. Rothery's acclaimed geological guide to the outer solar system includes results and close-up color and black and white images from both the 1995-1999 Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Voyager space probe. Rothery, a noted planetary scientist, explains the geological aspects of the major satellites of the outer planets, from Jupiter to Neptune and the Pluto-Charon system. In particular he shows how tectonic and volcanic processes, driven by heat from within, have shaped the rigid outer layers of these worlds. Rothery also discusses the similarities and differences among them and the ways in which they resemble Earth-like planets. This fascinating book is written in an introductory style ideal for first- or second-year college courses. Amateur geologists and astronomers will also find its insights rewarding.
About 12,500 years ago, an apocalyptic event struck Earth. A nearby supergiant planet, bigger than our sun, exploded with a catastrophic, supernova outburst. One of the huge fragments rampaged through the Earth’s celestial ramparts and, in due course, the blazing rock exploded over the thick ice sheet in the Pacific, shearing off this vast land that eventually submerged. The unprecedented high-intensity seismic waves shook the entire planet, leading to the terrible Global Deluge. This is a story where mainstream scientific observations and ancient religious texts and myths harmonize! The Siblings From The Sun is a thoroughly unique and gripping novel—based on science but filled with romance, adventure, and the horrors of nuclear war—as a small group of intrepid young adventurers fled from their moribund world, and seek a new habitable world…
The solar system has always been a messy place in which gravity wreaks havoc. Moons form, asteroids and comets crash into planets, ice ages commence, and dinosaurs disappear. By describing the dramatic consequences of such disturbances, this authoritative and entertaining book reveals the fundamental interconnectedness of the solar system--and what it means for life on Earth. After relating a brief history of the solar system, Alan Rubin describes how astronomers determined our location in the Milky Way. He provides succinct and up-to-date accounts of the energetic interactions among planetary bodies, the generation of the Earth's magnetic field, the effects of other solar-system objects on ...
Scientists have only recently come to believe that the presence of ice is widespread in our solar system. Focusing on the occurrence and significance of water ice, and ices formed by other materials, this volume considers the implications of the reservoirs of water ice for the presence of life elsewhere in our solar system, and for habitability by human explorers who may venture to these distant worlds in the future. Pat Dasch is a consultant in the space industry specializing in policy and public outreach issues. She has written, published, and broadcast on a wide variety of space-related issues for the past twenty years. From 1997-2001 she served as Executive Director of the Washington, DC-based National Space Society.