Phoenix Planetarium — Enamel Pins Inspired by the Planets Project Update: The Secret Behind Mercury's Colors

Attic Door Media

CREATOR

about 2 months ago

Project Update: The Secret Behind Mercury's Colors

Hello, Space Adventurers!
We wanted to start our first update with the planet that's closest to the sun: Mercury.

Here are some facts about the solar system's fastest planet:

Mercury is the smallest full sized planet in our solar system. It's only slightly larger than Earth's Moon, and twice as large as the largest dwarf planet, Pluto.
Speedy Mercury is named for the Roman god's swift messenger. It whips around the sun every 88 Earth days (about 4 times per Earth year).
Though the years are short, the days are long: a single day on Mercury is twice as long as it's year (around 176 Earth days). Each face of Mercury will spend one year in light followed by a year in darkness.
Because it's close to the sun, Mercury appears in the sky at dawn and dusk. It has been known as both a morning and an evening star.

You can see Mercury and all the other designs on the project page: Follow the Project!

Our Mercury phoenix is designed by Rahlee draws.

Rahlee added racing stripes in honor of the fleet footed Roman messenger god.

It's surprisingly colorful!

That's due to this image of Mercury's surface taken from the MASCS instrument on the MESSENGER space craft.

MASCS used infrared and ultraviolet light to look at minerals on Mercury’s surface and in it's thin atmosphere to answer questions like:

What is Mercury’s surface made out of?
How is Mercury’s atmosphere generated?
Does Mercury have ice at its poles?

MASCS measurements are combined with visible light photos of Mercury to help scientists understand how various feature of the planet were formed and what they are made of.
It's like looking at Mercury with super human eyes! 👀

Pretty cool right?

That's why we wanted used those colors in our Mercury design.

Thanks for reading! We'll catch you in our next update with more planetary facts.
Until then, you can check out all the phoenix designs here:
https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/attic-door-media/phoenix-planetarium/launch_party

Go Boldly!
The ADM Team

P.S., have you ever wanted to do a little astronomy yourself? You can!
Citizen Science projects World Mappers and Zooniverse let ordinary people help scientists catalogue images from our satellites and telescopes.
You can check out these projects here:

https://mappers.psi.edu/
https://www.zooniverse.org/

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