Tag: Tides

Space

Enceladus: a song of ice and tides

An artist impression of Cassini diving into Enceladus water plumes. credit: NASA/JPL

Cassini will terminate its 20-odd-years-long mission in September. But it’s determined to go out with a bang. In yesterday’s press conference, NASA announced that the probe, during a 2015 flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, found clues that the ocean within the icy moon has almost all we think it needs to spark life. Continue reading “Enceladus: a song of ice and tides”

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Space

Mercurial sunset

Nothing’s more naturally predictable than the progression of a day, right? The Sun comes up in the East, rises through the sky, then sets in the West. That’s part of the fascination of places where it isn’t quite so. However, one of the places with the craziest days is rather unaccessible: Mercury. It’s the closest planet to the Sun, so it feels the star’s gravitational … Continue reading Mercurial sunset

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