Welcome to Other Worlds!

 
Welcome to Other Worlds! 

Sunrise over a rocky planet (c) Alex Barrett 2011

I'm Alex Barrett, a planetary environmental scientist specialising in the landscape of Mars. These are exciting times for planetary science. We have dozens of instruments scattered across the solar system, sending back invaluable data every day. We understand more about how the other worlds of the solar system formed and function than we ever have before. But there is still a lot to learn, explore and discover.

As you might already have guessed this blog will largely be dedicated to planetary science. I will be discussing the geography of the different planets of the solar system and sharing my thoughts on space travel and exploration. I’ll also be talking about Earth, both the wonders it holds and the problems it faces. After all we have to understand our own planet before we can go and explore others. There may be occasional diversions into other topics; since science doesn’t break down into neat little boxes as well as some humans would like it to. 

So how is this going to work?

My plan is to do two types of article. The first will consist of blog posts on an interesting topic, probably once a week. Sometimes their might be more when a big space event is going on. For example this week there's a spacecraft landing on Mars, so expect that to get a fair bit of coverage. 

 The second type of article will be a “guess the planet” column. I’ll post a remote sensing image with no particular explanation or citation on Mondays, and give you the week to figure out what it is, and what planet it comes from. Then on Friday I’ll discuss what the image actually shows, where it comes from, who it belongs to and so on. 

So, join me on a tour of the weird and wonderful geography of our solar system, and possibly beyond. Grab your space suit, as its going to get a bit chilly out there!