Mike Brown's Blog

Update from Samantha on her paper that just came out today
(see: https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.07922)

---------------------



In the months since I first posted about the potential hotspot on Europa associated with a potential plume on Europa, I’ve been refining
our computer model and digging deeper into trying to understand what is going
on. As you’ll remember from the last post, a potential

Europa is hot right now. With the planning for the Europa Clipper mission underway and talk even of a lander, scientists are paying more attention to the little icy satellite than ever. Much of the recent excitement has been a discussion of the now-you-see-them-now-you-don't plumes that might be jetting material from the interior ocean. Such a possibility would be quite exciting indeed, as it

I know, I know.  We
have all been instructed by Arthur C. Clarke to attempt no landings on Europa.
But if you did land on Europa,
wouldn’t you like to know where to go? If you do, my graduate student, Patrick
Fischer, has a paper coming out that you probably want to read.


First, perhaps, it might be best to understand why anyone
would want to land on Europa at all. Europa – the second of

Ten years ago today I came in to the same office I’m in at
this moment, sat down in the same chair I am sitting in now, probably stared
out the window at the clear blue sky much like I’m doing right now. It’s even
likely that I drank coffee out of the very cup I’m drinking out of. Other than
that, though, nothing was the same. Just a week earlier, on Dec 28th
2004, I had discovered the second

I first published this five years ago today. It's all still true. -- MEB

My father was a rocket scientist. Well, OK, not precisely. More
specifically he was a rocket engineer. Or, more precisely still, he was
an engineer who worked on the computers that went into space and
navigated the rockets. He worked on the Saturn V that lifted Apollo
astronauts toward the moon, he worked on the Lunar

It didn’t snow much in northern Alabama where I grew up, so,
when I went to college further north, I was at a serious disadvantage when the
first blizzard came through and everyone streamed out of the dorms to engage in
an all night snowball fight. After my first rounds of fusillades ended up
splintering to little wispy bits in midair I quickly got the hang of
compaction, looking for wetter

When we moved into our house more than 7 years ago now the old owners left their Dish Network satellite TV dish attached to the roof. A few months later we got a sternly worded letter from the Disk Network demanding that we send them the dish back. With my detailed knowledge of the intricacies of the American legal system my obvious response was: come and get it. Which would have been fine with

Quick: name the three largest known objects in the Kuiper
belt. If you’ve been paying close attention you will instantly get Eris and
Pluto, and, if pressed, you will admit that no one knows which one is bigger. And
the third? An unscientific poll of people who should know the answer (my
daughter, my wife, my nephew) reveals that not a single one does.



The answer, of course, is Makemake (you

Sometimes I like to write about things in the sky that I've been studying. Sometimes I like to write about scientific discoveries in the outer solar system. Sometimes I even write about wild speculations I have about the solar system. But, every once in a while, I get to just sit back and watch the sky go by.

I love comets. When I first started graduate school to get my Ph.D. in astronomy, I

[You should probably start with Part 1]




The first thing that you notice when you look at a spectrum
of Europa -- from the Earth, from a spacecraft, it doesn’t really matter – is
the ice. Ice is everywhere. The spectrum of ice is a very distinctive looking
thing, with a quickly recognizable pattern of regions where the sunlight
reflects strongly from the surface and regions where there is