The other planets in the solar system POLL

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

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.