MessageToEagle.com

The Wandering Stars

1 April, 2012

MessageToEagle.com - In ancient civilizations, people pondered the meanings of the stars, watching for clues to their survival: the beginning of planting and harvesting times, the seasons, and even portents of danger.

They soon noticed that certain stars didn't stay in place, but wandered amongst the fixed star field.

Later astronomers and philosophers soon recognized that these were worlds in their own right, orbiting the Sun in a cosmic dance. Join us as we take you on a tour of the Solar System, and learn about The Wanderers.

The Wanderers is GSFC's latest, fully narrated, planetary movie designed for the NOAA Science on a Sphere system.

This system Science On a Sphere is in operation at 80 (and counting) locations around the world.

Why did we make this movie?

The planets have fascinated people since the earliest times and still do so today.

Spacecraft have now visited many planets and bodies throughout the solar system, with more missions currently on the way to their destinations.


Discovered in 1930, Pluto was long considered our solar system's ninth planet. But after the discovery of similar intriguing worlds deeper in the distant Kuiper Belt, icy Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet. This new class of worlds may offer some of the best evidence about the origins of our solar system.
Pluto is also a member of a group of objects that orbit in a disc-like zone beyond the orbit of Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. This distant realm is populated with thousands of miniature icy worlds, which formed early in the history of our solar system. These icy, rocky bodies are called Kuiper Belt objects or transneptunian objects.


Mercury, the closest planet to Sun is also the smallest terrestrial planet. It orbits so swiftly that its year lasts only 88 Earth days. The airless cratered surface could almost be mistaken for our moon, relentlessly bombarded by meteoroids for four and a half billion years.
One of these encounters left a giant scar called the golarus basin, one of the largest impact sights in the solar system. Temperatures on the surface of Mercury can reach a blistering 800 degrees Fahrenheit, and can dip to 300 degrees below zero on the night side.


This movie was designed to excite the imagination while showcasing the amazing data that has been returned from those missions.

All of the images shown in the movie come from real spacecraft data, only modified when needed to fill the sphere or to convey information not otherwise easily seen.

MessageToEagle.com via NOAA

See also:
Stars In The Milky Way Move In Mysterious Ways

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