Friday, April 8, 2011

APOD 4.2

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The picture shown above is a photo taken by Voyager 2 in 1986 of the largest cliff known in are solar system. Located on Uranus' moon Miranda, Verona Rupes stretches 20 kilometers deep. What I like most about this picture is it touches on how many more mysteries our solar system holds, and how much their is too explore. Even on a Miranda, a moon so distant it is orbiting Uranus, we are able to look into its dark recesses. How the cliff was formed remains a mystery, but something significant must have happened to form a cliff of such a great magnitude. What I also find fascinating about this picture is that we are actually able to see something so distant, and learn about and label a 20 kilometer deep cliff on a distant planet's moon. Sure, we can study galaxies further away, but they stretch hundreds of light years long. Here we are able to view a cliff, which while large in comparison to our cliffs, its size is infinitesimally small in comparison to the surrounding solar system.

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