Galaxy Nebula Location Map


Dr. Jason Soderblom said in a September 10, 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press Release that the evolution of lunar porosity can provide scientists with valuable clues to some of the most ancient life-supporting processes occurring in our Solar System. Dr. Soderblom is a planetary research scientist in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Earlier infrared data did not have sufficient resolution to separate MK 2 from Makemake's veiling glare. The astronomers' reanalysis, however, based on the more recent HST observations, indicates that much of the warmer surface spotted earlier in infrared light may simply be the dark surface of the companion MK 2. Since its discovery centuries ago, Ganymede has been the target of a great deal of well-deserved attention from the planetary science community. Earth-bound telescopes have gazed at Ganymede's puzzling, icy surface and, in later decades, flyby space missions and spacecraft, circling around Jupiter, have scrutinized Ganymede--trying to solve its numerous mysteries. These observations ultimately unveiled a complicated, icy moon-world, whose bizarre surface showed a strange and puzzling contrast between its two main types of terrain: the dark, extremely ancient and heavily cratered surface terrain, and the much younger--but still ancient--lighter terrain showing a vast array of mysterious grooves and ridges.