Waiter, There's Metal in My Moon Water Waiter, There's Metal in My Moon Water Bring a filter if you plan on drinking water from the moon. Water ice recently discovered in dust at the bottom of a crater near the moon's south pole is accompanied by metallic elements like mercury, magnesium, calcium, and even a bit of silver. Now you can add sodium to the mix, according to Dr. Rosemary Killen of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Recent discoveries of significant deposits of water on the moon were surprising because our moon has had a tough life. However, due to the moon's orientation to the Sun, scientists theorized that deep craters at the lunar poles would be in permanent shadow and thus extremely cold, and able to trap volatile material like water as ice if such material were somehow transported there, perhaps by comet impacts or chemical reactions with hydrogen, a major component of the solar wind. The impacts vaporized volatile material from the bottom of Cabeus crater, including water and sodium.
Galaxy Zoo: Hubble Wikipedia Zooniverse is a citizen science web portal owned and operated by the Citizen Science Alliance. The organization grew from the original Galaxy Zoo project and now hosts dozens of projects which allow volunteers to participate in scientific research. Unlike many early internet-based citizen science projects (such as SETI@home) which used spare computer processing power to analyse data, known as volunteer computing, Zooniverse projects require the active participation of human volunteers to complete research tasks. Projects have been drawn from disciplines including astronomy, ecology, cell biology, humanities, and climate science.[3] Active projects currently include: According to the Zooniverse site, these projects are now retired:
SCOPE: Cosmus [Projects:Cosmus' Sloan Galaxies Visualization] The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is a huge and important project to map, in a quarter of the sky, as much of universe as is visible from earth. The SDSS releases data periodically, and will hopefully be complete in a few more years. Download: sdss4wmap.zip (for Windows and Linux) sdss4wmap_mac.tar.gz (for Macs) : 440 000 galaxies (375 000 main sequence, 65 000 large red galaxies) and 70 000 quasars from SDSS Data Release 4, plus the cosmic microwave background as measured by the NASA/WMAP science team. Size: 55 Mb. You can find the movie made with this on the Cosmus movie page or on Google Video. [Caution: not many machines can handle this data set, so try the DR3 version - below - first.] Download: sdss3wmap.zip 300 000 galaxies and 49 000 quasars from SDSS Release 3, plus the cosmic microwave background. Mark Subbarao, Dinoj Surendran, and Randy Landsberg have made a 3d model of the galaxies and quasars found by the SDSS. Downloads of movies and of additional interactive models.
The Moon The Moon I had the ambition to not only go farther than man had gone before, but to go as far as it was possible to go.- Captain Cook Copyright © 1995-2011 by Rosanna L. Hamilton. All rights reserved. The Moon has fascinated mankind throughout the ages. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to step onto the surface of the Moon. The Moon is 384,403 kilometers (238,857 miles) distant from the Earth. Four nuclear powered seismic stations were installed during the Apollo project to collect seismic data about the interior of the Moon. The Moon was heavily bombarded early in its history, which caused many of the original rocks of the ancient crust to be thoroughly mixed, melted, buried, or obliterated. The Apollo and Luna missions returned 382 kilograms (840 pounds) of rock and soil from which three major surface materials have been studied: the regolith, the maria, and the terrae. The relatively bright, heavily cratered highlands are called terrae. Lunar Nearside Spectacular!
Exoplanet Orbit Database | Exoplanet Data Explorer Galaxy Zoo | A Zooniverse Project Blog Lunar Science Institute More than 37 years after humans last walked on the moon, planetary scientists are inviting members of the public to return to the lunar surface as “virtual astronauts” to help answer important scientific questions. No spacesuit or rocket ship is required—all visitors need to do is go to www.moonzoo.org and be among the first to see the lunar surface in unprecedented detail. New high-resolution images, taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), offer exciting clues to unveil or reveal the history of the moon and our solar system. “We need Web users around the world to help us interpret these stunning new images of the lunar surface,” said Chris Lintott of Oxford University and chair of the Citizen Science Alliance. “If you only spend five minutes on the site counting craters you’ll be making a valuable contribution to science and, who knows, you might run across a Russian spacecraft.” Spread the word, and see the Moon as never before….
Moon The Moon is in synchronous rotation with Earth, always showing the same face with its near side marked by dark volcanic maria that fill between the bright ancient crustal highlands and the prominent impact craters. It is the second-brightest regularly visible celestial object in Earth's sky (after the Sun), as measured by illuminance on the surface of Earth. Although it can appear a very bright white, its surface is actually dark, with a reflectance just slightly higher than that of worn asphalt. Its prominence in the sky and its regular cycle of phases have, since ancient times, made the Moon an important cultural influence on language, calendars, art, and mythology. The Moon's gravitational influence produces the ocean tides and the slight lengthening of the day. The Moon is thought to have formed nearly 4.5 billion years ago, not long after Earth. As of November 2014[update], the Moon is the only celestial body other than Earth on which humans have set foot. Name and etymology