Mercury: Oh Strange New World That Has Such Structures In It!
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National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC
Free, Tickets Required
4:00-5:00 pm Discovery Station
5:15-6:45 pm Lecture and Q&A
6:30-8:30 pm Observatory Open
Data from a spacecraft orbiting Mercury shows us just how wondrous and unique the smallest planet in our solar system is. Despite being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury harbors ice at its poles. It is smaller than its neighbors in space, but has some of the largest faults in the solar system. Mercury has a simpler surface than the other terrestrial planets, while the structure of its core is more complex. In this presentation, learn about how these complexities make Mercury so wonderfully unique.
The Smithsonian’s Stars Lecture Series is made possible by a grant from NASA.
This image, taken with the Wide Angle Camera (WAC), shows a portion of the Caloris Basin interior. The linear features visible in the left side of the image, running from top to bottom, are roughly concentric with the basin's rim. A second set of troughs (part of Pantheon Fossae) are radial to a point off the right side of the image. Both sets of troughs formed when the rocks of the basin interior experienced large horizontal forces that caused the surface to undergo faulting (fracturing) and to pull apart.
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