Planetary Geology Faculty

Plate Tectonics,
Geodynamics,
Seismology

Glacial Geology &
Quaternary Stratigraphy,
Geomorphology

Igneous Petrology
& Geochemistry

Cosmochemistry
& Teacher
Certification

You may wish to visit Paul Stoddard's award-winning Animated Virtual Planetarium. The planetarium has been recognized by the "Teachers" organization as "Best on the Web," and by "NJ Night Sky" as among the top astronomical sites. Here you can view animations of the visible solar system, the Earth-Moon system, comets, the Mercury-Sun system, and the Jovian system. The Earth-Moon animation includes eclipse predictions. Of particular interest is the ability to view and compare the usefulness of earlier models of the solar system, those of Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, and Copernicus, with that of the present in describing the orbits of the planets.

Most of us have met people who can call this place "home." It's Mars, of course, and its image on the main page is a link, which you may have selected to reach here. In this view the north polar cap is clearly visible at the top of the image, as is just a sliver of the south polar cap at the bottom. The dark region extending downward from the north pole is called "Mare Acidalium." Remote sensing has detected abundant water-bearing minerals in the mare of a kind that must have formed in a saline aqueous environment, indicating that Mare Acidalium must in fact have been a sea at some time now long in the past. Below Mare Acidalium and to the west, the large dark area is called "Margaritifer Terra." To the east of it, the smaller dark area is "Terra Meridiani."