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Image of Mercury taken by the Messenger Spacecraft.
The bright white dots are recent impact craters.
For those who might find the recently discovered Abell 1835 IR1916
object that is 13.2 billion light years away a little bit remote, perhaps
you would be more interested in something much closer to home. On October
6th the Messenger Spacecraft made the second of three flybys of Mercury,
taking pictures and using its instrument payload to make measurements.
Messenger is scheduled to go into orbit around Mercury on March 18,
2011.
And I don't know why, but I thought I would throw in a little space
traveling music into this one.
Have a good trip.
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This is a nice photo of Mercury. These flybys are actually a manouvers of slowing spaceship, right?
Good question. I had to look it up.According to NASA…"This means MESSENGER has to burn off a lot of energy during its journey. One way is to carry a large amount of fuel and perform braking maneuvers during the trip. But fuel already accounts for more than half of MESSENGER's total launch weight; adding more would weigh down the spacecraft to the point where it wouldn't be practical to launch at all.
The other technique, which MESSENGER is going to undertake on its journey, is called "gravity assist." Most people think of speeding up a spacecraft when they hear about this concept, but it can actually work to slow one down as well.
This is due to "angular momentum," the tremendous amount of energy a planet orbiting the Sun has because of its enormous size and speed. When a spacecraft flies past that giant body, it can tap into the planet's gravity to increase its speed. When a spacecraft flies along in front of it, the opposite happens: the vehicle gives up some of its energy to the planet."So I guess the answer to your question is — Yes! :up:And evidentally it also gives Messenger several passes by Venus.
Thanks :up:
Hey, once again an informative as well as entertaining entry. You're rather good at this, you know 😉
You know Allan, I thank you for your compliment. Technical Writing in school was actually my bad suit — I only got 3.6 out of 4.0 in it. So perhaps I've improved since 1998, I don't know. I'm glad you have liked the posts. That "new direction" for the blog that I mentioned about eight months ago — well I think it is well underway. If only I could get some new fiction done. 😦
Far-out!:D:lol:
Shake your booty, Star! 😆
😆
simply the best post around ! :up:
No way!
yes way! 🙂
😀
hugs to sweet Sasha :heart:
why write fiction when you obviously could write a documentary ed? both these last two posts are most interesting. sets my mind to wonder what beautiful things you'll find in nature to present tomorrow .. . . :wait:
Deb, never really thought about it. Perhaps it's just old habits?I'm certainly looking outward more these days. If other people get something from that, well that's the best I could imagine.
You know, Ed – everything changes over time.One day I will stop making photographs the way I do now. Maybe I will make videos, or paintings – or something completely different.
:yikes: Allan, :no:
Interesting idea. I wouldn't mind working with artisitic objects like that.Darko, i have made transitions like that before. I played in a rock band for almost 15 years before I quit the band and focused on photography the way I do today.
Do you have some recordings? 😀
@ Allan. I will come to your blog in any case. :up: And then there is always performance art. A friend of my friend Sean, named Elizabeth, said that she had always wanted to lay in a bubble bath in a museum, naked and reading a book. We worked on the idea a bit — me especially.