Quite a lot of progress on many fronts. Of the planets, I’ve worked on Neptune, Venus, Mercury, and Earth. Many of the nebulae and the man-made stuff have also grown a bit.

Earth, Moon and Mercury.

Mercury is named after the Roman god Mercurius (Greek Hermes, god of commerce and messenger of the gods), and it is of course the smallest planet in our solar system. It was actually called Hermes by ancient Greek scientists, and later Mercurius by the Romans, because they noticed how fast the planet moves. Because the orbit of Mercury is more elliptical than that of any other planet, it is at some points very close to the sun, and at others very far from the sun, causing the temperature to vary wildly from -173C / -280F to 427C / 800F. It takes Mercury 88 days to orbit the sun.

There is currently a mission to gather more information about Mercury underway. The spacecraft was launched in 2018, and it did its first flyby of Mercury on October 1, 2021.

Still some work left on Venus:

The Dumbell Nebula and the Cassini spacecraft:

The Dumbell nebula represents the last stage of evolution of a star and is a glowing shell of ionized gas. In time, it’s expected that the sun will also become such a nebula.

The Cassini spacecraft was used in a mission to gather information about Saturn. It was launched in 1997, and after being active for almost 20 years, it was intentionally destroyed in 2017. The mission was a huge success and provided material for years of research.

The International Space Station was launched in 1998. It is in orbit around earth, and there are 7 crew members on board. Each crew member usually stays for about 6 months.