EAN: 9783319121161

PLANET MERCURY - DAVID A ROTHERY GEBUNDEN

A new and detailed picture of Mercury is emerging thanks to NASA's MESSENGER mission that spent
four years in orbit about the Sun's innermost planet. Comprehensively illustrated by close-up
images and other data  the author describes Mercury's landscapes from a geological perspective:
from sublimation hollows  to volcanic vents  to lava plains  to giant thrust faults. He
considers what its giant core  internal structure and weird composition have to tell us about
the formation and evolution of a planet so close to the Sun. This is of special significance in
view of the discovery of so many exoplanets in similarly close orbits about their stars.
Mercury generates its own magnetic field  like the Earth (but unlike Venus  Mars and the Moon)
and the interplay between Mercury's and the Sun's magnetic field affects many processes on its
surface and in the rich and diverse exosphere of neutral and charged particles surrounding the
planet.There is much about Mercury that we still don't understand. Accessible to the amateur 
but also a handy state-of-the-art digest for students and researchers  the book shows how our
knowledge of Mercury developed over the past century of ground-based  fly-by and orbital
observations  and looks ahead at the mysteries remaining for future missions to explore.

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