A New Mnemonic to Help You Remember the Planets

Ten year old Maryn Smith from Montana recently won a contest to create a new mnemonic for remembering the newly assigned 11 planets, including 3 dwarf planets, in our solar system. The 11 planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Eris. The dwarf planets are Ceres, Pluto, and Eris. Her mnemonic is:

My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants.

To read the full story about Maryn's mnemonic, which will be published in a book and recorded in a song to be released in March, click here.
To learn more about dwarf planets, click here.

"Follow the Carbon." Follow the What??

Recently I had the pleasure of writing an article about the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments onboard the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) for the February 2008 issue of ChemMatters, which is a publication of the American Chemical Society for high school classrooms. Below is an excerpt from the article. To download and read the entire article (including a Spanish translation) and issue, as well as to access the accompanying teacher's guide, click here.

“Follow the yellow brick road”. “Follow the leader”. You’re probably familiar with both of these phrases. But who would want to “follow the carbon” and what does that even mean? To NASA, “follow the carbon” means to identify carbon-bearing compounds, their sources, and the processes that transform them in order to evaluate the habitability of Mars. And that is exactly what the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments onboard the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) intends to do. MSL is scheduled to launch in late 2009 and will land on the surface of Mars in mid 2010, where it will spend at least one Mars year (687 Earth days) roving around the surface and collecting data. MSL will be the biggest rover yet to visit Mars. It will also carry the biggest suite of instruments ever sent to the martian surface, including a camera, neutron detector, laser, microscope, and an analytical laboratory. SAM is one component of this laboratory. SAM plans to “find the carbon” on Mars by collecting samples of the soil and atmosphere and analyzing them with three scientific instruments. Using the results obtained by the SAM instruments, scientists back on Earth will seek to investigate the habitability of Mars by answering the question, “What do the presence or absence and characteristics of key compounds at Mars tell us about the ability of Mars to support past or present life?”

Latest image from the Mercury Flyby

Craters with Dark Halos on Mercury

As MESSENGER flew by Mercury, the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) captured this view on January 14, 2008. Two of the larger craters in this image appear to have darkened crater rims and partial “halos” of dark material immediately surrounding the craters. Both craters appear to have nearly complete rims and interior terraced walls, suggesting that they formed more recently than the other nearby shallower craters of similar size. There are two possible explanations for their dark halos: (1) Darker subsurface material may have been excavated during the explosions from the asteroid or comet impacts that produced the craters. (2) Large cratering explosions may have melted a fraction of the rocky surface material involved in the explosions, splashing so-called “impact melts” across the surface; such melted rock is often darker (lower albedo) than the pre-impact target material.

For more images check out http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/view.php?gallery_id=2

Catch up on the latest planetary science news with "Planetary Science Research Discoveries"

Planetary Science Research Discoveries (PSRD) is an educational site that summarizes the latest research on meteorites, asteroids, planets, and other bodies within our solar system. The site is supported by the Cosmochemistry Program of NASA's Science Mission Directorate and by the Hawai'i Space Grant Consortium. In existence since 1996, PSRD maintains a searchable archive of its issues, as well as a helpful glossary. The articles are neither too technical nor too simplified and include links to additional information and resources to help readers further their understanding of a particular topic. You may also choose to subscribe to be notified via email when new issues are posted. It's an excellent way to learn about current scientific research from the scientists who are actually doing the research!

The most recent article of PSRD focuses on the formation of the Moon. Check it out!!