Images from some of the places we've landed:

Click to view attachment

As always, a much higher resolution version (2.2 Mb JPEG) is on my flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/4176200620/

-Mike

Needs more Eros from NEAR. Definitely a surface we have landed on.

Nice!

For some reason, I frequently think about this; Earth is the oddest one (at least the most diverse) out of what we've seen to date. As always, need more data!

Yeah, I like that too. Really brings home the watery nature of Earth, something I always stress in my talks. They might know the proportions, as a simple figure, but audiences are often very surprised when they see images of the Earth from space showing just how much of Earth's surface is covered in water.

Very nice Mike, though I'd have liked the Earth image to contain some sign of life - a distant bird maybe.

There's life in that image, just not plainly visible.

I couldn't find an image with a view of the horizon and the rocks close up. I think when we landed on Eros the camera was pointed straight down.

Thanks! When I tried to get my "Earth ocean" picture, I was surprised at how often a seagull/pelican/buoy/jet skier/boat/jet contrail showed up in the image. (none of these were issues on the other planets)

In 50 years of space exploration, we managed to land on the surface of only 6 Solar system bodies (this is not counting impacts on other bodies: Jupiter, Tempel). To me, this just goes to show the inherent difficulty of space exploration. I wonder how many more bodies will be in our collection 50 years from now. If I am not mistaken, Phobos is next on the list (if Phobos-Grunt is launched in 2011), then comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. Then what? Europa, Enceladus, a NEO...

Really nice image, I don't recall seeing that done elsewhere before. I'm trying to subtly indoctrinate my juvenile relatives, and along with a mass delivery of laminated colour prints of various "your name on our spacecraft" certs, that's a good candidate for provoking curiosity I think.

Somewhat tangentially, I wonder how different Earth would look from space if life had never arisen (or got established) here.

Thanks! One of the reasons I made it was for an upcoming middle school presentation.



Very similar I think, except:
On a big scale, there would be no green on the landmasses.
On a middle scale, the tropical rainforests and other humid environments would be subject to much more erosion than now.
On a smaller scale, the valley patterns and stream meander patterns might be very different, without biomats to lock in the terrain, the rivers could wander freely. IIRC, there was recent work looking at meander patterns on Mars and comparing to those on Earth. IIRC burrowing animals were also a significant factor in valley spacing/soil creep on Earth. ("the meek shall shape the Earth")

Hmmm...thinking about this a little more. Without life, there would be no free oxygen, and the chemistry would be all different. So oceans would be a different color due to lower oxidation state iron salts, and surfaces might not oxidize the same way. And the amount of carbon dioxide could be very different, so you might not have the same-sized polar ice caps (the Azolla algae event is thought to have helped push us from a greenhouse Earth (no polar caps) into an icehouse Earth (ice ages) back in the middle Eocene.)

So the overall shapes would be similar, but the colors might be off.

-Mike

Awesome! Always wanted to see something like this. Would prefer an Earth picture taken closer to noon though, just to get a blue sky.

Mike covered a lot - just two more points. Algae make the sea more greenish, especially in cooler waters. And life sequesters CO2 rather effectively, so a dead Earth (perish the thought) might be significantly warmer and possibly shrouded in total cloud cover. Either way, any change in cloud cover would be the most noticeable overall effect.

Nice poster idea. One thing just to be picky...the title of the poster "Planetary Surfaces".
Some asteroids and moons in there I see. General audiences may get the wrong impression.

How about something like: "Places We've Touched", "Solar System Surfaces" or "Distant Horizons"

Thanks, Astro0!

My personal definition of "planetary" is much, much looser than the official one.

...but I really like the title "Distant Horizons"!

This is really, really special, thank you.

Yes, but this link may have some productive starting points:
NEAR

From tedstryk at the the Forgotten NEAR thread....

Could you also make the point that Galileo's probe "landed" on Jupiter, even though it didn't produce any images from the 'surface' (if there is one)?

3-Axis graphic showing a relative plot of surface processes evident on different bodies:

Click to view attachment

Axes show volcanic (including geyser spray deposition), tectonic (including contraction), and surface (aeolian, fluvial, chemical deposition) processes.
Things further from the origin (near Callisto in this plot), have fewer craters. They have been more modified are are "younger" surfaces.

In reality, this should be a multidimensional plot with geyser jets, and subduction, etc. as separate axes. This plot necessarily lumps some of the parameters together.

Plotted points are more or less logarithmic and relative to each other.

Higher resolution versions (fullest is 6.6 Mb JPEG) are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/4182144638/

-Mike

(And I'd like to specially thank ugordan for letting me use so many of his images.)

IMHO, this is truly the next level in public outreach and education- pretty pictures as well as data and a story to tell to boot! Just wow.

Very tidy summary that normally takes a couple of pages of graphics - thanks for that! Right into my astronomy 101 class next term, and I passed on the link to another instructor as well. (The same class that's getting started three days late because all classes are cancelled for those days - in Alabama, having your football team in the national championship is a religious festival. I'd like to apologize in advance to anyone in Pasadena for anything the fans might do).

Very nice, Mike. One suggestion I'd make... I think it reflects the new view of Mercury better - I would have Mercury a bit higher on the volcanic axis, and the Moon a bit lower.

Phil

Done! (Flickr version updated)

Fantastic stuff...but might Triton deserve a place on the chequerboard?

P

Ooops! I forgot about Triton!

Where do y'all think it should go?

(I'm thinkin: maybe not as tectonically active as Enceladus, but more so than Ganymede. Way up on the (cryo)volcanism scale, and shifted slightly to the right due to wind deposition and sublimation effects?)

You may want to make it more clear that your poster is based on surfaces formed by ancient as well as current processes (in fact predominantly ancient). As it is, the title can be misinterpreted to mean current processes, in which case, the Earth would be up with Io for volcanic and the Moon would be at near zero.

It is tough to find a title wording that makes clear that the chart represents the cumulative result of processes rather than the current presence of those processes. We all know what you mean, but for a wide audience the current wording could lead to confusion.

How about 'landforms' rather than 'processes'?

Final version of the "checkerboard plot" with Triton included: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/...8/?reuploaded=1

Also reworked the surface image poster. Reordering according to process complexity. So from Asteroid Itokawa ---> Mars-->Titan-->Earth.
It was fortuitous luck that the Mars and Titan images matched up so well. They almost perfectly grade into each other.

I prefer the new version. (And thanks to Astro0 for the title suggestion!): http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/4187061594/

-Mike

Neat graphic. My only suggest is to move Io much further up the Tectonic processes axis. Maybe between Ganymede and Enceladus?

Gee. I thought that Io was almost pure hot-spot volcano.

But then rereading the Wikipedia entry (which I'll guess you wrote?), it looks like it does have mountains from tectonic compression forces.
Well, this is just all turning into a learning experience for me....

Many of the surface features on Io are tectonic. The mountains are the most obvious expression, but many of the margins of the volcanic depressions are controlled by faults.

I said that it should be between Ganymede and Enceladus mainly because the tectonic activity on Io isn't as plain to see as say Europa and Enceladus because of the sulfur and lava flows that cover the surface, but Earth is pretty far up there on the tectonic processes axis, and its tectonic processes are less evident (fewer exposed fault lines) as a result of erosion and deposition than say Europa or Enceladus.

Updated!

Perfect!

I prepared a new graphic that compares the surface areas of all the major planets and bodies in our solar system.

Click to view attachment

Earth is the little blue blip in the middle.

You will need to look at the "original size" on the flickr page to see the captions for the smaller bodies.


(I feel really, really small right now....)

[EDIT: 6/13/2010: Rescaled Jupiter (original scaled box was wrong size)
Added Eris, reformatted smaller body labels to make them easier to see. ]

VERY neat comparison! Tiny we be...

Not to nitpick, Mike, but how are you defining "surface" for the gasballs? I'm assuming the opaque cloud deck layers since you include the GRS, and of course doing likewise for the little worlds wouldn't improve their comparative standing much at all (except maybe Titan?)

Trying to think of an alternative generic term, but nothing snappy comes to mind..."apparent surface area"? "Visible sphere"? I dunno.

Thanks! I used the surface area data straight from Wikipedia. I'm assuming they were using the uppermost cloud deck for the gas and ice giants, but the surfaces for Venus and Titan. (I let them deal with the equatorial bulges of Jupiter and Saturn).

For the Great Red Spot, which is variable in size, I assumed a rectangular area of 30,000 km x 13,000 km, then converted it to a circle for visualization.

No Eris? No Ceres? In a lot of ways, Ceres feels (to me) like a natural stopping point. Of course, that probably adds half a dozen tiny moons to your list. Maybe using one or two-letter abbreviations would work better than lines for the tiny ones.

--Greg

Very informative Mike, thanks!
Interesting to see that the Earth's land area is comparable to the surface area of Mars.

I remember reading that the surface area of Mars and the 'usable' surface area of Earth were about the same.

I also remember a factoid that Jupiter's Great Red spot was three times the size of Earth (diameter-wise). But when the surface areas of the two are compared, they work out about the same.

More graphics showing planetary atmospheric volumes:
(Titan Atmospheric Chemistry thread, post 9)

And full res versions on flickr:

Everything in solar system:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/4612160825/

Only silicates and icy bodies:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/4613181600/