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| Solar System | User Notes | The Stars Beyond | Human Exploration |
Green=On This Page Strand: Earth and Beyond position Bubble Nebula
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These are sites which give good overviews of space topics and most provide a huge range of links to more specialised sites, having documents and pictures.
The sun and you and me
and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles* a day
In an outer spiral arm,
at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'
- from "Galaxy Song" by John Cleese
* An old measure of distance: 1 English mile = 1.6093 kilometres
The sphere of the sun's influence.
Heliopause: Where the solar wind gives way to the interstellar medium.
An Interstellar Probe will be launched in the direction of the Sun's travel round the Galaxy to explore the interstellar medium. It may be driven by a solar sail, achieving speeds up to 5 times faster than anything launched so far!.
Ptolemy, 87 - 150 AD, mapped the Earth at
the CENTER of the Universe!
A solar eclipse only occurs at the time of the new moon when sometimes the moon is between the sun and the Earth. A lunar eclipse occurs only at the time of full moon if Earth should cast its shadow on the moon. Things are a little more complicated on those planets where there are a greater number of moons. What would moon people (lunatics?) call what we call a lunar eclipse? What is the difference between the umbra and the penumbra?
The next total solar eclipse visible from New Zealand will occur in
2028 on July 22 about 4.15 pm.The sun will only be about 8.5 degrees above
the horizon and you will have to go to Dunedin, or places near, to see it.
There will be a total luna eclipse visible from NZ at 2 a.m. local time,
July 17, 2000, which is July 16, 14hrs Universal Time (UT). The next total
luna eclipse visible from New Zealand is some years away.
The messenger of the Gods - Mercury travels fast as it orbits
close to the Sun. Captain Cook was sent to Mercury Bay,
off Whitianga, on the Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand,
to observe the transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun.
A number of probes have been sent to Venus but of the landers,
most did not survive the descent through the hot corrosive
atmosphere. Venus was recently used, with Earth,
to help boost the speed of the Cassini Spaceship.
A huge range of satellites and shuttle projects are studying Terra in many different ways.
"Just remember that you're standing on a planet
that's evolving And revolving
at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second,
so it's reckoned,..."
- from "Galaxy Song" by John Cleese
* 900 m/h=1448.37 km/h; 19 m/s = 30.58 km/s
Yes that's right! Earth has two moons! An asteroid has been
discovered to be a moon of Earth. A report in the Daily Telegraph,
January 25, 2000, provided a few details. Already known to Astronomers,
a British Team from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of
London, has established that Cruithne is a moon of Earth. It is
likely to remain so for the next 5000 years. Cruithne, is about
4.8 km across. The trojan asteroid was apparently captured by the
interaction of the gravities of the Sun and the Earth. It completes
its eccentric horseshoe orbit about Earth every 770 years.
Can we use Luna as a base for further exploration? Will this depend on extraction of the water found recently at the poles? Fortunately there is a fair bit of water in the Solar System though it takes some getting to. Apart from supplying our own needs it can be used for rocket fuel and even to make habitats, some claim - Igloo style.
There are a number of meteor showers every year resulting from various comets. This fireball exploded over Hongkong in November 1998. On November, 19, 2001 we will run right through the middle of the dust trail left by Comet Temple-Tuttle well over 100 years ago, when exactly? Unlike previous years, we in NZ may be well positioned to see what may be the best Leonid display for some time.
The upper air burst into life!
And a hundred fire-flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about!
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.
- from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He watched a Leonid Meteor storm one evening in the company of William and Mary Wordsworth and worked that experience into this famous poem.
Mars is currently under intense investigation. Two probes failed to take up position around and on Mars in late 1999 - a considerable setback to exploration there.
There are projects under way to map asteroids in the hope that we can spot the bad one in time, or find good sources of materials for space projects.
For the very first time an Earth spaceship has made orbit round
an asteroid. The NEAR spaceship went into orbit round
Eros, on February 14 (St Valentines Day), 2000, at a minimum radius
of 35 km from it's center. Scientists will be able to
study Eros closely for a year.
The biggest planet circling Sol. Please note Jupiter's largest moons: Io, Europa, Callisto, Gannymede. How many more are there?
Saturn is the most spectacular of Sol's planets with eighteen moons, possibly more, as well as the rings!
Uranus has twenty moons!
There are many objects in the Kuiper belt with Pluto the largest, though it is smaller than our moon. Some astronomers want to downgrade Pluto from planet status. Charon is the largest moon, relative to its primary, in the Solar System.
No space craft has been close enough to Pluto for a good picture and it is too far away for even our biggest telescopes to make out any detail.
The Stardust spaceship aims to collect dust from a comet but while
on it's way it is collecting other dust from the occasional stream it
may pass through.
The Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) mission to pass close to two comets
is beginning construction of it's spaceship for launch in July, 2002.
Some asteroids
may be the remainders of old comets that got trapped in the inner
Solar System, probably by getting too close to
Jupiter.
| Contents | The Stars Beyond | Human Exploration |
Last updated 17 February 2000.
Compiled by Noel Fuller Comment and correction welcome.