boy i sure do seem to love trying to fit complex existential discussions into single tiny 4-panel comics.
Posts tagged telescope
checklist
hahaha- oh wait, i have to draw comics for all of them, don’t i? :|
vulcan
i really need to stop trying to explain complex relativity concepts in like two panels. i can barely fit the text.
interestingly the guy who speculated about the existence of vulcan wasn’t just any random astronmer. it was urbain le verrier, who used the exact same method to predict the existence of neptune based on the orbit of uranus in 1846. so statistically speaking when he said “there might be a planet here”, until then he was right 100% of the time.
magnetic tornado
“magnetic tornado” sounds like the kind of technobabble you’d hear in an old star trek episode or a netflix original sci-fi movie.
wait, i hope no one from netflix is reading this. they might start getting ideas. O.O
double sunset
this is my favourite random factoid about mercury. on most planets the sun moves from east to west, then venus decides to be different and has the sun move from west to east, and then mercury comes along and says “¿porque no los dos?” and makes the sun do a whole reverse parking manoeuvre and then carry on like it was nothing.
i should probably mention that this happens over the course of about 8 earth days and there’s no atmosphere for the sun to light up orange, so it would probably also be the most boring sunset in the solar system, but somehow i don’t think sedna would mind.
mariner 10
nasa’s mariner 10 was the first probe to ever visit mercury, making 3 flybys of mercury in 1974-75. the next one was nasa’s “messenger”, which orbited mercury from 2011-15, gathering much more detailed data of the planet. the third mission, europe & japan’s “bepicolombo” is on its way to mercury right now, and will make its first flyby this year on october 2, and then enter mercury’s orbit in 2025. get hyped people!
unfortunately we’ve never soft-landed on the planet and there currently aren’t any plans to. we have crashed into it though, which is something i guess. (rip messenger)
phases
a fun consequence of the phases thing is the closer the inner planets are to earth, the less of them is visible. while venus, the closer of the two, is at its brightest during its crescent phase when it’s near earth, mercury is actually at its brightest during its full phase, when its furthest from earth. this makes mercury the only planet in the solar system to technically get brighter the further away from us it is, which is pretty weird.
the first planet
if i ever apply to go to mercury as an astronaut, my resume will just say ‘i lived in australia’.
i remember how crazy it was when water ice was discovered on mercury back in 2012. it’s funny how a hundred years ago many people assumed the other planets must be full of water and life just like earth, but then we developed telescopes and spacecraft and found dead barren wastelands instead, but then we looked closer and found ice and organic molecules and other signs that the planets aren’t as different from our world as we thought.
mercury
hey, astronomy comics! remember those?
apparently i’m committing to doing a series of comics like the moon ones at the beginning of sedna about all 8 planets, so we’re starting it off with nobody’s favourite planet, mercury. before you all roll your collective eyes though, i promise there’s a whole bunch of interesting stuff about mercury, so hopefully by the end of this little comic series you’ll all gain at least some appreciation for this particular ball of rock in space.
light pollution
it’s not vandalism if it’s for science™! right?
by the way, to all you confused americans, that thing is called a “cricket bat”. cricket is this crazy sport that’s like baseball but actually slightly interesting.