The other planets in the solar system POLL

Hehehe, "uranus".

Jupiter, which'll prob walk this right?

Fuck a gas giant.

But a vote for Jupiter is a vote for Jupiter's moons, vote Jupiter

Mars for me. The gas giants are too m/f scary and all the rest are too hot or cold. I find Mars quite haunting in the respect that all the signs are that it was quite like our planet until it's core cooled down and the solar winds stripped it clean.

I'm going with Mercury. Mercury is hardcore.

my brain quickly turned this into a sailor moon thing and now i can't dissociate

WTF happened to Venus? Sat there in the habitual zone with a m/f atmosphere like that.

i think this is saturn or mars for me but it's close

Is the asteroid belt the remains of a planet that got murked by some giant bolide impact?

more like planets that never fully formed.

The asteroid belt formed from the primordial solar nebula as a group of planetesimals, the smaller precursors of the planets, which in turn formed protoplanets. Between Mars and Jupiter, however, gravitational perturbations from Jupiter imbued the protoplanets with too much orbital energy for them to accrete into a planet. Collisions became too violent, and instead of fusing together, the planetesimals and most of the protoplanets shattered.

I <3 Earth, so I voted for the most earthlike: Mars. It's the red planet! How cool is that?

Pluto is a KBO, there's no scientific reason to include it.

http://fisica.cab.cnea.gov.ar/estadistica/abramson/celestia/gallery/slides/Io-Jupiter.jpg vs. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0901/newrings_cassini_big.jpg for me.

hehehehehehe

http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jonesingjay/12452594/518386/518386_600.jpg

jupiter is most terrifying/fascinating.

not only massive volcanic moons but an ancient everlasting storm that is 2-3 times the size of EARTH.

jupiter

thinking about Neptune. pretty dope planet.

In contrast to the hazy, relatively featureless atmosphere of Uranus, Neptune's atmosphere is notable for its active and visible weather patterns. For example, at the time of the 1989 Voyager 2 flyby, the planet's southern hemisphere possessed a Great Dark Spot comparable to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. These weather patterns are driven by the strongest sustained winds of any planet in the Solar System, with recorded wind speeds as high as 2,100 kilometres per hour (1,300 mph).

orbits the sun once every 165 years.

bonus points for 'event horizon'.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Neptune.jpg/609px-Neptune.jpg

Pluto is a KBO, there's no scientific reason to include it.

― dan m, Saturday, March 29, 2014 7:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.wombania.com/wombie_images/believe-in-pluto-b.jpg

In lieu of the Moon, Neptune.

i think my brain has still not really wrapped itself around the concept of a giant planet made of gas. i cannot actually imagine what the surface is like!

neptune's moons >>> jupiter's moons iirc?

venus, anyway. its pure deadliness seems above and beyond the call of duty

pluto can do one. YOU ORBIT YOUR OWN MOON. waste!

All the planets are cool, but my heart says Neptune.

hardest poll

i voted saturn cuz it's the system's most-decorated but venus is my #2 for bradbury's "the long rain" alone

also chix

saturn tho has titan with its sand dunes and lakes of utterly clear liquid methane

people need to let Pluto go, it's still out there doing its thing, it doesn't have to pretend any more

voting Neptune because Holst also because it's Neptune

neptune has the prettiest name

Jupiter is obv

Pluto obv not

http://wanderingspace.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/c_venera_perspective_colorbthumbnail.jpg

Voted Mercury because there probably isn't any mercury on Mercury.
(otoh, there isn't a Mars bar on Mars either, probably)

sad about the lack of love being displayed on this thread for Uranus, most underrated planet imo

Near the time of Uranian solstices, one pole faces the Sun continuously whereas the other one faces away. Only a narrow strip around the equator experiences a rapid day–night cycle, but with the Sun very low over the horizon as in the Earth's polar regions. At the other side of Uranus's orbit the orientation of the poles towards the Sun is reversed. Each pole gets around 42 years of continuous sunlight, followed by 42 years of darkness.

the full range of the possible, even just within an 8 (or 9) planet solar system is just so extreme that you can only vacillate between awe and terror when you contemplate it.

heheheheh you said uranian

oh wait

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/28100000/Beavis-Butthead-beavis-and-butthead-28198911-450-495.jpg

runner up is Saturn bcz Titan, also Saturn has the hula hoop, it was hard not to pick it tbh

Titan is in many ways a lot more interesting than some of the planets.

Awesome poll. As a kid I would have said Saturn easy - fucking rings! - but ryan is right, all of them are so fucking strange and, yeah, 'alien,' that it seems impossible that we're part of the same set, but I'm sure the Venusians would say that about us too. I'm leaving the moons out of the equation because a lot of them would swing it on awesome names alone, let alone bizarre physical properties, and it makes it too hard.

Venus a strong contender for "so close...and yet so far" (so much that we send everything to Mars even though Venus is closer!). Mercury a blazing badass that flew too close to the sun. Pluto* for spooky cold silent distance, a place to simply sit on a desolate rock and watch from like the Little Prince's planet. Stoked that New Horizons is going to finally arrive next year and we'll get good pictures and stuff. Neptune for color, as well as craziness. But I think this really comes down to Saturn and Jupiter, which are both so fucking bizarre and sublime in scale and properties that if they weren't in our solar system you'd figure they were invented by Jules Verne. The tiebreaker was simple:

http://i459.photobucket.com/albums/qq313/doctorcasino/makoa_zpsc4d245be.jpg

these planets make me recognize the sheer unlikelihood of any single one of us being alive, let alone this planet being habitable, let alone existing. all of these other planets are like nightmarishly beautiful dionaea plants.

i think my brain has still not really wrapped itself around the concept of a giant planet made of gas. i cannot actually imagine what the surface is like!

they don't have surfaces, so to speak! their massive gravity warps a core of helium into a metallic state that generates a massive magnetic field, protecting the gaseous atmosphere, but there's no rocky core in the middle as there is with the inner four planets.

anyways would vote for saturn based on insane qualities of its moons, because seriously saturn's moons are way crazy, but i've been having recurring nightmares about jupiter since i was a kid so i figure it wins on the terror scale.

Fascinated by the mechanics of a gaseous planet and its satellites.

Another reason I voted for Neptune, having a moon as massive as Triton.

http://sites.psu.edu/tgg119/wp-content/uploads/sites/661/2013/02/pluto.jpg

xp Huh? Triton ain't all that, it is slightly smaller than our moon.

the full range of the possible, even just within an 8 (or 9) planet solar system is just so extreme that you can only vacillate between awe and terror when you contemplate it.

― ryan,

otm

☆ミOlympus Mons is 14 mile high dormant shield volcano on Mars with a base the size of France☆ミ

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002800/a002883/olympus_mons_false_web.jpg

I can remember National Geographic in the very early eighties publishing the first astonishing color photos of the outer planets as we got the Voyager images.

Olympus Mons dwarfing Everest.
http://martianchronicles.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/olympus-mons.jpg

/i think my brain has still not really wrapped itself around the concept of a giant planet made of gas. i cannot actually imagine what the surface is like!/

they don't have surfaces, so to speak! their massive gravity warps a core of helium into a metallic state that generates a massive magnetic field, protecting the gaseous atmosphere, but there's no rocky core in the middle as there is with the inner four planets.

xp Huh? Triton ain't all that, it is slightly smaller than our moon.

Ice volcanoes, retrograde orbit, probable captured KBO. Triton is still pretty awesome

I'm not taking into account the moons of the planets in this poll. Planets on their merits only.

xp Yeah, you take that back!

Neptune
Saturn
Jupiter
Venus
Mars
Mercury
Uranus
Pluto

Triton sounds amazing tbh, forgive my ignorance. I just have a thing for Titan after reading something about how it has flowing water at - 76 celsius and something called Ice 6 which reminds me of Kurt V. Talking of which it is amusing how in The Sirens of Titan there is a pill you can swallow which allows you not to get melted by the 1000 degrees heat of Venus!

Titan and Triton: Oh! I Always Get Those Two Mixed Up!

wonder where earth would place in this poll? it's a pretty fucking cool planet ya gotta admit.

It doesn't look much but it has a great atmosphere.

http://www.fortheloveofgeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/mars_to_earth-browse.jpg

That's earth viewed from Mars.

What do people think of the idea that the current orbits of the planets are not fixed + have fluctuated wildly at times? Solar drift could be an explanation for the "snowball earth" period. I found this quite a fascinating, scary read, i am not science enough to know if it is bs.
http://nautil.us/issue/8/home/the-madness-of-the-planets

Wow, that's a cool article. I'm not science enough either, but I love the idea that actually Jupiter was basically this proto-planet mediator that roamed around and rearranged everything, basically accounting for the forms and arrangements of all the planets. Feeling better and better about voting for it.

good ole jupes

also, this could be an awesome basis for a sci-fi story:

In one version of the theory, developed by Morbidelli’s colleague David Nesvorny at the Southwest Research Institute, our solar system originally had a fifth giant planet that got ejected entirely during this commotion; if so, it is currently wandering alone among the stars.

Truly the andy gibb of planets

Planets Having Flown

gr8 article

can't decide in this poll

We have seen it snow on Mars. So until another planet has snow, it's got my vote.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/388625main_Jupiter_Approach.gif

It's gonna be weird when we ignite that as a second sun in the year 3057.

Nothing like drunkenly googling molecular clouds and red giant branch phases on a Sunday night after bedtime.

seriously is anything weirder or more horrifying than Jupiter

Venus

I mean, I don't believe in a biblical "Hell," but Venus is hellish and imo more horrifying than Jupiter. Jupiter is just a big gas ball.

They're all impossible. There is no god.

The gas giants are just like blowing cigarette smoke into a soap bubble, except on a totally enormous scale. I voted for Neptune, so I'm not immune to their charms, but I find the rocky planets way more fascinating.

rocky-ist

I mean look at Jupiter, that...thing is for all intents and purposes "two houses over". what the hell is even going on there?

yeah i feel like the gas planets get docked a little since you can't imagine being *on* them like earth, and yet....those things are some serious happenings.

the cross-sections you see of the giants don't clear anything up, they just pile on the perversities.

Uranus: "the base of the mantle may comprise an ocean of liquid diamond, with floating solid 'diamond-bergs'. gtfo, p_p

we are fucked

hard to understand anything without a "surface" but i'm the giants are out there with their unfathomable proportions and hitchcockian cloud formations.

remember when nasa fired Gallileo into Jupiter and it lasted for like an hour before it was crushed by the overwhelming pressure

"It entered the atmosphere of Jupiter at 30 miles per second (46km per second), the highest impact speed ever achieved by a man-made object. Amazingly, Jupiter’s dense atmosphere slowed the craft to 0.07 miles per second (0.12km per second) in just four minutes. The probe’s heat shield, made of carbon phenolic, was able to withstand the 15,500°C ball of plasma caused by this sudden deceleration, producing light brighter than the Sun’s surface."

Jupiter, man.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/redspot_cassini.gif

going with Uranus because of its weird axial tilt

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Uranus_clouds.jpg/257px-Uranus_clouds.jpg

holy shit clay xp

am tempted to vote jupiter.

venus is really fascinating too:

Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, gravity, and bulk composition (Venus is both the closest planet to Earth and the planet closest in size to Earth). However, it has also been shown to be very different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide which absorbs over 95% of the incoming solar radiation. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of Earth's. With a mean surface temperature of 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F), Venus has the hottest surface of any planet in the Solar System except for the surface of the solid core of Uranus. It has no carbon cycle to lock carbon back into rocks and surface features, nor does it seem to have any organic life to absorb it in biomass. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. Venus may have possessed oceans in the past,[13][14] but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose.[15] The water has most probably photodissociated, and, because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field, the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind.[16] Venus's surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with slab-like rocks and periodically refreshed by volcanism.

from wikipedia

mars is completely overrated. the red surface is cool but other than that it's just a cold bare rock. same with mercury (except merc is hot obviously), just not much going on there.

venus vs jupiter for me

Saturn because it gave us Sun Ra

I have been convinced by the Jupiter love in this thread. Jupiter owns.

?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b0DMoPLIys

http://cimg.carsforsale.com/569434/7bb5c4a8-0fa9-4ac2-bb22-7b85427b5001.jpg

agreed that mars is the most overrated

i want to say that mercury is the most underrated, but i'm not sure. a lot of that is dependent on my idea of how fucking MONSTROUS the sunrise must be there. also, the rotation of mercury is very strange - its years are 88 earth days, but it completes a rotation every 176 earth days. that creates some really strange things with sunrises:

At some places on Mercury’s surface, an observer could see the Sun rise about halfway, reverse its course, then set, all over the course of one Mercurial day. This happens about four days prior to perihelion, because Mercury’s angular orbital velocity is equal to its angular rotational velocity. This causes the apparent motion of the Sun to stop. Once Mercury achieves perihelion, its angular orbital velocity exceeds the angular rotational velocity and the Sun begins to move in reverse.

i tried to search for artist renderings of sunrises on mercury but found nothing. but in my mind it's completely amazing, because it's a combo of it taking so LONG and the sun being so enormous. i feel like that magic moment when the sun first barely emerges over the horizon would be magnified 1000x on mercury

uh, that second paragraph is not a quote from universetoday.com, just in case you couldn't tell

Haha, I liked the shift in tone there for a moment.

the idea that extraterrestrial planets can be overrated is very o_O to me

tsrobodo, that, and:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf3iWc6krj8&feature=kp

although I suppose pluto is overrated itt xp

Oh, did https non-embedding thing - it was 'Fred Vom Jupiter', anyway.
xp

The thing about Jupiter is that one of its satellites (Io) is as interesting and beautiful as any planet, another may harbor liquid water oceans (Europa), and there are two more big moons, at least 63 small ones, and a ring system too.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/jupiter/gal_io2_47971.jpg
Io, not visibly exploding at the moment.

God, I love Io.

lol it looks like a moldy cheese ball

"Impact craters on the surface of Venus (image reconstructed from radar data)"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/Mgn_p39146.png/758px-Mgn_p39146.png

"Maat Mons is a massive shield volcano. It is the second-highest mountain, and the highest volcano, on the planet Venus. It rises 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) above the mean planetary radius at 0.5°N 194.6°E, and nearly 5 km above the surrounding plains.[2] It is named after the Egyptian goddess of truth and justice, Ma'at."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maat_Mons_on_Venus.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Maat_Mons_on_Venus.jpg

Actual images from the surface of Venus via Venera 13.

http://www.space.com/images/i/000/023/793/original/venera13-venus.jpg

These are extrasolar planets but in my astronomy publishing day job one of my favorite things to read/hear about are HOT JUPITERS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Jupiter

band name

"Falling Off the Grid" iirc

This read makes me think of my Dad's oft-repeated mantra "I don't need to go overseas on holiday, there's enough here in Britain". Intergalactic travel - who needs it? So much to see right here at home. (Types "Ganymede" into airbnb...)

thread, not read

Venus from Venera 13 after the camera lens distortion is corrected.

http://lightsinthedark.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/c_venera_perspective.jpg

While looking at that photo, remember that Venus's surface temp is consistently 875/f. Ouch.

Any planet with "Helium Neon rain" should win this

Sanpaku otm. Also, there may be life in those Europan oceans

As a huge Kim Stanley Robinson fan I feel a lot of affection for Mars.

Mars can't compete with some of the other planets Wow! Fuck!! Ahhh!!! factors but it has a ghostly quality. It might have looked like a smaller earth when it was a warmer planet still holding water. That old Cosmos episode "Blues For a Red Planet" is a classic, even with the real footage from the rovers DeGrasse Tyson's version won't better it.

am tempted to vote jupiter.

venus is really fascinating too:

Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, gravity, and bulk composition (Venus is both the closest planet to Earth and the planet closest in size to Earth). However, it has also been shown to be very different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide which absorbs over 95% of the incoming solar radiation. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of Earth's. With a mean surface temperature of 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F), Venus has the hottest surface of any planet in the Solar System except for the surface of the solid core of Uranus. It has no carbon cycle to lock carbon back into rocks and surface features, nor does it seem to have any organic life to absorb it in biomass. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. Venus may have possessed oceans in the past,[13][14] but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose.[15] The water has most probably photodissociated, and, because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field, the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind.[16] Venus's surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with slab-like rocks and periodically refreshed by volcanism.
from wikipedia

― marcos, Monday, March 31, 2014 4:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man reading that description of venus, someone please tell me there's some rad preachy scifi story about how venus, sister planet of earth, used to be populated by men long dead as the follies of their global warming by way of releasing ever more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere without a care in the world made their planet hotter and hotter, leading to total destruction.

I think Sanpaku mentioned on the global warming thread that even we tried to bioengineer extreme runaway global warming on earth by simultaneously burning all the fossil fuels, releasing all the trapped methane hydrates etc earth would still be a teensy fraction as hot as infernal hothouse Venus.

A couple billions of years ago, as the Sun grew more luminous in its evolution through the main sequence, Venus was shrouded in a sweltering atmosphere of water vapor from evaporating oceans. Photodissociation of the water molecules in the upper atmosphere liberated hydrogen, occassionally with enough energy for escape velocity, over geological time leaving behind oxygen and its appetite for carbon. At hot enough temperatures, atmospheric carbon dioxide is more stable than crustal carbonates, so eventually nearly all of Venus's carbon became atmospheric. Earth has similar amounts of carbon, but thanks to our prevailing temperatures and the burial of diatom skeletons, algal blooms and peat, most is sequestered deep underground.

The sun continues to grow brighter, so the Earth has under a billion years left before its oceans evaporate and it experences a similar runaway greenhouse. Underground extremophile bacteria have perhaps 1.5 billion years left. In general, over the lifespan of any star the currently habitable zone moves outward. Earthlings were just lucky their goldilocks planet orbited a star large enough for a wide habitable zone, small enough for a long period for biological evolution, and their planet accreted near the outer edge of the habitable zone.

Such a cool image:

http://martianchronicles.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/jupiter-aurora.jpg

The billion watt lightshow of Jupiter's aurora borealis, as seen in UV by Hubble. The Galilean moons leave footprints in the magnetic Birkeland currents, clearly visible has bright spots.

When it comes to this particular solar system, Earth's got everyone else beat with the best porridge.

Oops, that should be trillion watt lightshow. About the power consumed by 100 large cities on Earth.

Be sure to consider Holst in your deliberations...

They used have a measurement of infinite resistance. When trillions of volts can use the vacuum of space as a conductor between Jupiter + a satellite it renders IR nonsense.

Hey Sanpaku, could you do a brief summary of how you believe Mars became a dead planet? No pressure like, I think you add a lot to these type of threads and love reading your responses.

the main theory about mars' current state, in my understanding, is more or less like:

mars is a lot smaller than earth, so as time went by its molten iron core cooled and volcanic activity on the planet stopped. the lack of a hot metallic core led to the death of mars' magnetic field, which meant the dangerous particles blasted out by the sun stripped the planet of its atmosphere. ta da, dead planet.

That is also my reading of Mars. I suppose that means our molten core is finite, but just hasn't cooled down yet because the extra mass gives it more time.

Mars is the only tectonically inert terrestrial planet, right?

Venus, for being the hottest, I'm so shallow.

Hottest despite being only second nearest the sun.

Saturn. Saturn. Saturn. Years ago when they were seemingly discovering new moons every minute, I was really into the jostling between Saturn and Jupiter and was totally cheering Saturn on. MORE MOONS FOR YOU, SATURN, YOU ROCK.

Jupiter is OK but it's no Saturn. And its rings are poxy.

MORE MOONS FOR YOU, SATURN, YOU ROCK GAS BALL.

Saturn has a giant hexagon. Close thread.

http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/SaturnHex-RGB-11-28-12-JMajor.jpg

Almost turquoise, too.

saturn's hexagon looks like a creepy jello pancake O_O

you'll sing a different tune when we're all being transported to saturn, to escape earth's fire-y doom, in 15 years.

i don't care as long as I get to ride on the hula hoop

jupiter's gas giantness and saturn's rings have a lot to recommend them but venus and its atmosphere really do it for me. a place where the air was toxic and unimaginably hot really got into my imagination as a kid.

damn, this poll sent me back to my childhood when I was super into outer space. reading about all the crazy stuff happening in our own cosmic backyard just blows my mind.

and whoever said it up-thread about this being the hardest poll is otm. been thinking about it for hours and still can't pick a favourite.

voted saturn but now i'm wishing i voted jupiter, it just seems to have a lot more going on

same here xp. i was super into space as a kid but took it as more 'normal' because that's what kids do. now that i'm older i can understand how truly insane it all is that something like jupiter exists, and that we exist

do people know of science fiction that is good on the 'you can only vacillate between awe and terror' thing? I kind of remember 'No Particular Night or Morning' by Ray Bradbury being a bit like this, but it's been years since I read it.

Be sure to consider Holst in your deliberations...

― The Whittrick and Puddock (dowd), Tuesday, April 1, 2014 6:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The other day on the local classical station I heard "Mars, the Bringer of War," and was all like THANK YOU FOR SO MANY MOVIE TRAILERS.

Dead heat between Neptune and Saturn for me.

Man, this takes me back to my childhood watching the photos on TV as the Voyagers sent them home. I still get a warm glow thinking about those 2 little dudes out there, heading off into interstellar space.

Auroras on Saturn's south pole: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saturn.Aurora.HST.UV-Vis.jpg

Team Uranus is afwully quiet ITT imho.

*farts*

hey!

neptune is a little underrated imo, it gets overshadowed by the other gas giants. it's a beautiful planet though. i did a report on it in 5th grade, i drew up a really cool poster and made a styrofoam ball model of it and its moons

my uncle said that at the time that i "should send it to the president"

did u

haha, no

send it to the president of neptune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWw4Qjy5-fk

Every time someone says "Uranus" I can only think of

http://comedycentral.mtvnimages.com/images/shows/Futurama/V_series/ftr_108_smelloscope_v6.jpg

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/04/03/hidden-ocean-discovered-on-saturns-moon-enceladus/

^ was just reading about that this morning, idk how anyone can pick a favorite given all the vast differences among just the other 7 planets, let alone including moons

The lunar butt jets are new to me.

PS - Am I using "lunar" correctly? Does it refer to any planetary, non-man-made satellite, or just to the one that orbits Earth?

ime it exclusively refers to Earth's moon ("Luna")

were there more than 9 planets in our solar system at one point? feel like we destroyed a few, just to watch 'em die.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoG5bhofvMk

Write-in for Planet X

Pretty sure uranus will take this. huehuehue

Mercury making a play for the Pluto holdouts: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/03/16/solar-systems-smallest-planet-is-shrinking/

hehehehehe

Without life earth would become a water world, the importance of plate tectonics on life. http://nautil.us/issue/12/feedback/why-aliens-and-volcanoes-go-together

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/04/18/mountains-on-saturns-moon-iapetus-fell-from-the-sky/

It may sound like something out of “Chicken Little,” but at some point in the history of Saturn’s moon Iapetus, the sky was actually falling: Scientists reported this week that an entire 800-mile-long mountain range along the moon’s equator formed after it fell from space.

We should poll satellites once we're done with the planets

http://i.vimeocdn.com/video/304943403_640.jpg

Jon Anderson still quiet as to what "mountains come out of the sky and stand there" means

Neptune blue

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

whoa Pluto with the sympathy vote bloc turning out in surprising force

BALONEY

all those wasted votes and Mercury ffs!

I call for a runoff election.

Nobody appreciates Mercury. Everyone goes for the bloated gasbags.

you're a....oh nevermind.

huh, uranus is not a favorite

hurhur

no, I will not pull your finger.

people don't understand the magnificence of the sun from mercury. JUST THINK ABOUT IT MAN

it's like you're a 2-year-old staring up at the iron giant, only you're a planet and it's the SUN

Nobody appreciates Mercury. Everyone goes for the bloated gasbags.

― jmm, Thursday, April 24, 2014 8:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just like in real life yo ... :-)

that said, kinda surprised at the love for Neptune ... i voted for it, but as a goof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSJub1A1aIk

I voted for Neptune because in 1989, I was lucky to have a pass into JPL during Voyager 2's closest approach to Neptune and the Triton barnstorming. The bandwidth is far better now, but I have a specific nostalgia for that era. Late night hang out in an auditorium filled with scientists and news media all jacked on coffee waiting for each frame to come down. The local cable channel ran a JPL feed on an unused station. I'd leave the TV tuned to it for hours and watch Neptune's crescent get smaller in the rear-view mirror one frame at a time.

Of the five spaceships leaving the solar system, four of them have a thoughtful message from Carl Sagan on them. (he was around at fly-by night)

The fifth one has my half-scrawled signature on it.*

*along with signatures of all of JPL, whoever was there for open house, and whoever signed the Internet form.

ew, mars so overrated, who cares about mars, it's so...normal in comparison

smh @ pluto pity votes

i'm sure uranus is fascinating and everything but it will always get automatically docked a million points for every incidence of "hur hur, uranus" attempted comedy

Top 3 otm

Yep, despite #stanning4jupiter

Bullshit poll. Let's do it again in 3 years and see who the REAL winner is.

Mercury Venus Mars top three! #rockist

Man, Uranus really got fucked.

Yeah, the head of steam around Uranus really dissipated.

Neil deGrasse Tyson noticeably skimmed Uranus in the intro ep of Cosmos

Not sure why anyone's surprised at Uranus pulling up the rear.

i'm sure uranus is fascinating and everything but it will always get automatically docked a million points for every incidence of "hur hur, uranus" attempted comedy

― lex pretend, Friday, April 25, 2014 2:59 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. It's not just the immaturity of it, nor the fact that the jokes are typically third rate, but I mean, there's been millions of painful jokes about it already, each more tedious and obvious than the last. Leave this lowest of hanging fruit be and let the damned planet rest already.

Lex knows comedy

Right, we all should give Uranus a rest.

haven't seen Uranus beaten this badly in a while

The planet that must not be named.

Some people really butthurt about Uranus.

lowest of hanging fruit hehehehehe

there is nothing funny about any of this

what's chafing uranus lex

JUPITER WUZ ROBBED

also what's up uranus

I guess I'm not surprised that Uranus was the one planet on the outer rim that got jobbed.

My name is Johnny Fever. I'm 40 years old and I still find all this Uranus joeks funny.

i didn't find them funny even when i was a child. BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT FUNNY

Someone's got a stick up their butt about Uranus.

seems like we're split down the middle on the humor of uranus

Next poll:

http://www.australianscience.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/kepler-37-system.jpg

i pronounce uranus the boring way

Nah next thread should be favorite KBO so the Pluto stans can win something.

(I'm voting Makemake because I like its name. Makemake. It's fun to say.)

next thread should be uranus joke poll

nah people will probably just be assholes about it

heee

it is kind of a shitty poll idea

i'm beginning to think that uranus' poor showing has a lot to do with us still not knowing much about it, it's got a pretty placid and some might say bland surface despite those epic rings (which are still not near saturn's). i think we're all a little curious about exploring it further, we can admit that much, so we try again and send a probe into it.

otoh some ice giants might just be "crappier" than others (uranus)

I don't know, I think a higher mark would always have been a bit of a stretch for Uranus

it's the jan brady of the solar system

Uranus is like a black hole.

I just would really have liked it if Uranus supporters had shown up an wrecked 'em.

I think we should give this a rest if lex finds jokes about Uranus distasteful.

that's the thing about uranus jokes, you think they're worn out but just give them a while and they come back around

Uranus is cyclical.

All the same, I think we should bend over backwards so that sensitivities about Uranus don't flare up.

Only one spacecraft in the history of spaceflight has ever made a close approach to Uranus. NASA’s Voyager 2 zipped pass Uranus in January, 1986, coming within 81,000 km of the surface of Uranus. It took thousands of photographs of Uranus and its moons, and then sped off onto towards its next target: Neptune. No other spacecraft have ever been sent towards Uranus, and there are no plans to send any more.

I was trying to picture ilx minus all the things that annoy lex and it made me lol

ilx minus other people you mean

Haha, "Urine us"!

NASA’s Voyager 2 zipped pass Uranus in January, 1986, coming within 81,000 km of the surface of Uranus.

We went to my grandparents' for a visit and Granddad was watching a cable channel showing nothing but that footage. Just a big white sphere with some stats updating on the side. I sat down next to him and watched it with him for awhile. Honestly, it was a little like that Young Ones where they watch the dot for awhile.

You know what else is funny?

YOUR ANUS.

that's not funny.

http://theconversation.com/jupiters-great-red-spot-could-disappear-in-a-generation-26798

https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/48655/width668/7mffnqb7-1400203086.jpg

Love this Neptune composite on APOD yesterday

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1405/Neptune-South-Pole-Voyager-2_950x682.jpg

I find it incredible that in the 70's/80's the Soviets managed to engineer a probe with a camera that can withstand the heat and atmospheric pressure of Venus. I know the Mars rovers have done an amazing job beyond expectations, but the surface of Venus ffs ? This is a bit old and some of the images are frustratingly small, but it is worth checking out.
http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

http://mentallandscape.com/C_Venera_Perspective.jpg

The theory that we already had a smaller moon from a giant bolide impact prior to the Thea collision, excellent article.
http://nautil.us/issue/13/symmetry/when-the-earth-had-two-moons

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/t1.0-9/10365727_849471851740494_6117098277333421237_n.png

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/02/stuff-you-dont-know-about-venus/

4. Difference in temperature between day and night on Venus: 0 degrees.

5. Difference in temperature between the planet’s equator and poles: 0 degrees.

6. Reason for #4 and #5: That enormously thick, carbon dioxide atmosphere redistributes heat very efficiently. In other words, if you’re on Venus and you need to cool off, your best bet is to go up. Roughly 30 miles up, where the pressure and temperature finally relax and become something Earth-like (see #8).

[...]

8. That doesn’t mean the planet is necessarily lifeless. It’s possible that organisms could live in those acid clouds, which contain water, energy, and nutrients.

Distant Uranus Sees A Storm Surge Of ‘Monstrous’ Proportions

http://www.keckobservatory.org/images/made/images/blog/Uranus_Aug20141_800_407.jpg

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/tech/innovation/is-pluto-a-planet/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Recently read about that technicality. I believe in the case of the earlier vote there had been an original subcommittee featuring the likes of Dava Sobel and Owen Gingerich that drew up guidelines under which Pluto was a planet, but then the rubbish-clearing, broom-clean clause was added, driving Pluto out with a flaming sword.

This is the dopest thing I have seen today, wow!
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/october/close-encounters-comet-siding-spring-seen-next-to-mars/

Siding Spring, officially designated Comet C/2013 A1, made its closest approach to Mars at 2:28 p.m. EDT on Oct. 19, at a distance of approximately 87,000 miles. That is about one-third of the distance between Earth and the moon

fuck me that is close, can't wait to see the rover pics if there are any.

It must be true

http://gizmodo.com/uranus-smells-like-farts-1793765256

likely story

but its a bit of a little miracle bc ive been in below zero weather and the greatest thing about it is that you can let one go and the odour immediately disappears after being released

one of lifes greatest joys tbh

https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/planets-ranked-1818586375

Uranus the most unloved of gas giants here too.

All gas giants are overrated.

1. Earth

Oh big surprise, coming from an Earth-based website.

If I can’t set foot on you, fuck you planet.

Disregarding melting or freezing to death.

https://www.universetoday.com/137252/surface-ice-mercury-previously-thought-says-new-study/

I can't remember if anyone mentioned on here that Mercury’s low axial tilt means permanently shaded regions and the presence of ice! But I'm astonished.

I would have voted for Pluto as the underdog; freezing, isolated on the periphery, with people arguing whether it even counts or not

I think those cold regions of Mercury would be fitting sites for the first extraplanetary gulags. Russians used to refer to Siberia as "the moon", forget the moon pal, you're going to the frozen lake next to the inferno!

PBS' NOVA just ran a five-part series on the planets that's worth your time. Zachary Quinto's narration gets ASMR narcoleptic but it's a great summary of where things are at. If you only watch one, go for the one on Jupiter.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/planets/

i wonder if its using the same shots or similar as brian cox's recent effort

watch both obv

counterpoint: don't watch the one with Cox and watch the other one instead.

Drink once whenever you see clumps of proto solar system material collide into each other. Drink twice if it's enough to form a planet.

chug extinction level event

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eJM0WlEjTs

I saw Saturn through a really big telescope last week, and now Saturn is my favourite.