#Astronomy Articles



Valles Marineris, A Martian Grand Canyon

The image above shows the Valles Marineris (Mariner Valley) canyon system. At over 3000 kilometres in length, up to 8 kilometres deep, and Valles Marineris absolutely dwarfs Earth's Grand Canyon. In contrast, the Grand Canyon is a mere 446 kilometres long and 1 kilometre deep. The two Viking Mars missions …


Volcanic Plumes on Io

On June 28, 1997 the Galileo spacecraft was directed to take a series of photographs of Jupiter's moon Io. Of interest were the volcanic features glimpsed by the two Voyager spacecraft as they flew past nearly twenty years earlier in 1979. The image above is an extract from the resulting …