The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) Center for STEM Research, Education and Outreach comprises an independent group of researchers and educators, innovating ways to engage students and the public in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Within the SIUE Graduate School, the STEM Center @SIUE brings together research faculty, graduate students and practitioners to conduct […]
Tag Archives | mercury
Name Craters on Mercury
We love to leave our mark wherever we explore. We like to say that “we were here.” We like to name whatever we find that we don’t know much about. Names bring a certain personal connection between us and the inanimate objects we find around us. It’s a good thing that there seem to be no […]
Mercury, Up Close
When I first starting testing PlanetMappers: Mercury Edition before it launched, I thought that Mercury was very much, well, like the Moon: dry, grey, and cratered. Of course, we’ve learned in the past few years that Moon isn’t so dry and definitely isn’t boring, and the same goes for Mercury as its been studied by […]
Mercury’s Volcanoes
Here is some more interesting news coming out about Mercury from the MESSENGER spacecraft. It was long thought that Mercury didn’t really have major, explosive volcanism in the past, like the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980. For that, you need volatiles, or compounds that boil at relatively low temperatures, astronomically speaking. When the planets […]
MESSENGER Milestone
Last week, NASA announced that the MESSENGER spacecraft surpassed a huge milestone having returned 200,000 images of Mercury back to Earth. We say, congratulations! You deserve the best high-five ever! MESSENGER is now in its second extended mission studying Mercury and its environment. As the first spacecraft to orbit the innermost planet to the Sun, […]
Now Introducing: Mercury Mappers
It’s here! A brand new citizen science project! Everyone, welcome Mercury Mappers to our happy family. Technically, it is still in “beta” which means that all the site content isn’t in place, but we are so excited to have the data and tools up and running that we’re going ahead and sharing it anyway. This […]