“magnetic tornado” sounds like the kind of technobabble you’d hear in an old star trek episode or a netflix original sci-fi movie.
wait, i hope no one from netflix is reading this. they might start getting ideas. O.O
Posts tagged sun
double sunset
this is my favourite random factoid about mercury. on most planets the sun moves from east to west, then venus decides to be different and has the sun move from west to east, and then mercury comes along and says “¿porque no los dos?” and makes the sun do a whole reverse parking manoeuvre and then carry on like it was nothing.
i should probably mention that this happens over the course of about 8 earth days and there’s no atmosphere for the sun to light up orange, so it would probably also be the most boring sunset in the solar system, but somehow i don’t think sedna would mind.
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
(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.
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.
death of a star
obviously this is a much more complex and interesting subject than i could possibly squeeze into a four panel comic, so i highly recommend you go watch the episode of ‘crash course astronomy’ on youtube about high mass stars.
also in case you thought i made a mistake with the timeline, no, a smaller star actually lasts much much longer than a larger star, as it’s much cooler and thus burns its fuel slower. while the largest stars we know of (hypergiants) last only millions of years, the smallest stars (red dwarfs) can last for trillions of years. seriously. trillions with a t.
i’ll probably do a comic about this some day, so i should shut up now before i spoil it.