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Webcomics featuring sedna

mariner 10

mariner 10 published on No Comments on mariner 10

nasa’s mariner 10 was the first probe to ever visit mercury, making 3 flybys of mercury in 1974-75. the next one was nasa’s “messenger”, which orbited mercury from 2011-15, gathering much more detailed data of the planet. the third mission, europe & japan’s “bepicolombo” is on its way to mercury right now, and will make its first flyby this year on october 2, and then enter mercury’s orbit in 2025. get hyped people!

unfortunately we’ve never soft-landed on the planet and there currently aren’t any plans to. we have crashed into it though, which is something i guess. (rip messenger)

phases

phases published on No Comments on phases

a fun consequence of the phases thing is the closer the inner planets are to earth, the less of them is visible. while venus, the closer of the two, is at its brightest during its crescent phase when it’s near earth, mercury is actually at its brightest during its full phase, when its furthest from earth. this makes mercury the only planet in the solar system to technically get brighter the further away from us it is, which is pretty weird.

the first planet

the first planet published on 1 Comment on the first planet

if i ever apply to go to mercury as an astronaut, my resume will just say ‘i lived in australia’.

i remember how crazy it was when water ice was discovered on mercury back in 2012. it’s funny how a hundred years ago many people assumed the other planets must be full of water and life just like earth, but then we developed telescopes and spacecraft and found dead barren wastelands instead, but then we looked closer and found ice and organic molecules and other signs that the planets aren’t as different from our world as we thought.

mercury

mercury published on 1 Comment on mercury

hey, astronomy comics! remember those?

apparently i’m committing to doing a series of comics like the moon ones at the beginning of sedna about all 8 planets, so we’re starting it off with nobody’s favourite planet, mercury. before you all roll your collective eyes though, i promise there’s a whole bunch of interesting stuff about mercury, so hopefully by the end of this little comic series you’ll all gain at least some appreciation for this particular ball of rock in space.

arrival at mercury

arrival at mercury published on 2 Comments on arrival at mercury

(click here for a high resolution version of this illustration)

i thought it would be fun to do a series of drawings depicting what a future where humanity has colonised the solar system might look like, so for today’s illustration i started with the planet mercury.

here you can see an armada of spaceships approaching a city hidden inside the craters on the north pole where the sun never reaches and even water ice can be found. of course, mercury isn’t exactly the most hospitable of places in the universe even with a permanent shelter from the sun, so it would probably be more useful as a scientific outpost rather than an actual colony (like antarctica), but given all the volatile materials blasted onto the mercurian surface by the sun i suspect geologists would have plenty of science to do.

doing wildly different styles and subject matters for each illustration has really impressed upon me why so many popular online creators have found one thing that they can absolutely nail and do it over and over again. trying new things is hard. especially when you have no idea how you’re going to get to the finish line. i just hope it pays off and i actually get better at illustration cuz i’m way too lazy to keep challenging myself like this forever.

light pollution

light pollution published on 3 Comments on light pollution

it’s not vandalism if it’s for science™! right?

by the way, to all you confused americans, that thing is called a “cricket bat”. cricket is this crazy sport that’s like baseball but actually slightly interesting.

speed of light

speed of light published on No Comments on speed of light

well, this is definitely the nerdiest comic i’ve ever done. sorry to everyone who’s just here for the cute drawings.

this is a really counterintuitive concept, because “travelling through time” is the exact opposite of what it is in a time travel movie. if you travel quickly trough time, you actually get to the future slower (from your perspective).

if you want to “time travel” to the future, you need to move slowly through time (by moving really fast through space, like neutrinos) so that everything else ages much faster than you.

yeah i know it’s confusing. blame einstein, not me.

velocity

velocity published on 1 Comment on velocity

fun fact: if you lie around in your room all day, you’ve technically moved further than someone who ran a marathon from east to west in the same time, relative to the centre of the earth.

unfortunately, fitness apps don’t seem to understand this for some strange reason.