Thread: What's your favorite Planet?

Pluto, the largest planet in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Juhupiter!



But quite closely followed by Saturn, this is a view from Cassini, with the sun behind it:



And it has Enceladus as a moon, which might harbour life - if so - Saturn wins of course!!

Jupiter purely because of the nights dawn trilogy

Honestly - for me because the cover art on Ian M. Banks "The Algebraist" featured photographs, and the book is about dwellers on a gas planet and was so wonderful - that's how I came to have Jupiter as my favourite planet! Fantastic book - highly recommended!
Still didn't treat myself to Jupiter jewellery, but I will eventually:



Beautiful music Aristaeus - heard it before, but didn't know the composer!

Well, looks like Jupiter, my favorite, is winning so far.. Seems that I'm not alone.

earth

Rhododendron

Ha! Darkmatters knows about little planet Rhododendron orbiting Russel's teapot!



Nobody tells you this at school - but that's what the teapot was created and put there for - feeding the Don!

Planet X! Nibiru!
Professor Zecheria Sitchin was right all along, I just know it!

Yeah - gods in rockets!

I voted for the comedy option.

Jupiter. It's a wonder to see with good binoculars and has gotten me through rough times, like those months I spent homeless in the woods, tracking the moons each night; but really, I like all of the night sky.

Next year we get to see Pluto up close. Should be quite interesting:

Pluto-bound New Horizons update | Human World | EarthSky

I've always been intrigued by Uranus.



But seriously, Earth. Gotta love a planet that has put up with us for so long...

Uranus! Interesting - the uniquely tilted one!

URANUS, GOD OF THE SKY: Uranus is the third largest planet in our Solar System. It was discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1781, and shares its name with the Greek god of the sky. Most of what we know about Uranus came from the NASA Voyager 2 spacecraft’s flyby of the planet in 1986. Uranus has nine major rings and 27 known moons. This image, taken in infrared light, reveals cloud structures not normally visible to human eyes. Methane gas in the upper atmosphere absorbs red light, giving the planet its blue-green color. Uranus is spinning on its side, probably because of a collision with a large object early in the Solar System's history. Image Credit: California Association For Research In Astronomy/Science Photo Library

unusual axial tilt that lies parallel to the plane of ecliptics and highly twisted magnetic field.

Earth - of course, goes without saying, I find!

I like Uranus for it's color.

Planets are lame. Europa's where it's at, yo.

"It" being possible forms of life, obviously.

It's Enceladus you'd want to be talking about first of all the moons when it comes to potential alien life, Mzzkc! Like I said above - that would make Saturn as it's planet the uncontested number one - except we'll find even more surprises elsewhere!

http://www.dreamviews.com/science-ma...ace-ocean.html

Shame - I read up on it much further and made a big post - somewhere - not in Science and Mathematics, but somewhere where people have a crush on aliens, like me too, in the middle of other topics. Doesn't keep me overly:



It's all covered in ice, but spews a huge plume of salty water into space from it's south pole, where there are heatsources, which are not yet fully understood in the shape of "Tiger Stripes":





And there's organic chemistry in the salty water - doesn't mean life - but you have all what you'd need for abiogenesis, and you could probably survive there as an earthly bacterium of fitting properties, as far as I understand several sources - below Wikipedia:

Assessment of habitability
The Cassini mission has provided strong evidence that Enceladus has a liquid water ocean with an energy source, nitrogen (in ammonia), nutrients and organic molecules, including trace amounts of simple hydrocarbons such as methane (CH4), propane (C3H8), acetylene (C2H2) and formaldehyde CH2O), which are carbon-bearing molecules. The presence of an internal salty ocean with an energy source and simple organic compounds in contact with the moon's rocky core, may advance the study of astrobiology and the study of potentially habitable environments for microbial extraterrestrial life.

Heat sources
During the July 14, 2005 flyby, the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) found a warm region near the south pole. Temperatures found in this region range from 85–90 K, to small areas with temperatures as high as 157 K (−116 °C), much too warm to be explained by solar heating, indicating that parts of the south polar region are heated from the interior of Enceladus. The presence of a subsurface ocean under the south polar region is now accepted, and it explains the why the thermal output is confined to that area, but it cannot explain the source of the heat.

Several explanations for the observed elevated temperatures and the resulting plumes have been proposed, including venting from a subsurface reservoir of liquid water, sublimation of ice, decompression and dissociation of clathrates, and shear heating, but identification of all the internal heat sources causing the observed thermal power output of Enceladus are still undetermined.

Heating in Enceladus has occurred through various mechanisms ever since its formation. Radioactive decay in its core may have initially heated it, giving it a warm core and a subsurface ocean, which is now kept above freezing through an unknown mechanism. Geophysical models indicate that tidal heating is one of the main heat sources, perhaps aided by radioactive decay and some heat-producing chemical reactions. A 2007 study predicted the internal heat of Enceladus, if generated by tidal forces, could be no greater than 1.1 gigawatts, but data from Cassini's infrared spectrometer of the south polar terrain over 16 months, indicate that the internal heat generated power is about 4.7 gigawatts, and suggest that it is in thermal equilibrium.

The observed power output of 4.7 gigawatts is challenging to explain from tidal heating alone, so the main source of heat remains a mystery. Most scientists think the observed heat flux of Enceladus is not enough to maintain the subsurface ocean, and therefore any subsurface ocean must be a remnant of a period of higher eccentricity and tidal heating, or the heat is produced through another mechanism.

If I wanted to posit alien life somewhere in the solar system for a story - Enceladus would be the ticket - maybe "somebody" actively heats it up..?
Purely fictional - not saying somebody is - but if there was...




I should actually answer this poll with something like "the first exoplanet with alien life we'll find" - and we even have candidates with pictures! I'm unsure, actually, if these are real(istic) pictures, I thought, we see them only as fly-bys in front of stars? Whatever...
Source: HEC: Graphical Catalog Results - Planetary Habitability Laboratory @ UPR Arecibo The upper one is the current one, but I liked the lower picture, and I can't grasp the concept of "too many space pictures" anyway...

Of course they are out there!!

Neptune is my fav! I like it because it's blue and it's my favorite part in Holst's The Planets. It has such a cold, dreamy far off sound that makes me think of water... like sailing on a vast ocean at night:

Ooh - one could lucid dream of sailing on Neptune - and so, that you see, it's actually round - be some huuge planetary surfer...
Or go more extreme, and sail in the Red Spot of Jupiter, a monstrous tornado, going round and round for hundreds of years already...

Mercury, because I think it's pretty hot. Also I'm pretty sure that's where Freddy Mercury came from, he certainly didn't come from Earth.

Rofl

Yeah he just picked his first name when he got here. " 'Freddie' sounds good"

Of course I love my home planet the most, but if it weren't for Jupiter, we would be getting slammed with asteroids constantly- as a matter of fact I said that to someone in a dream just the other night when they asked me the same question!

Yeah - Jupiter sort of vacuum-cleans the place for us! Great argument, 4thDimension! Lovely avatar, too!

Virtualucidity - you're the first, who likes it hot here it seems - them poor two inner planets need a bigger lobby, maybe.
Read: Steph will add some more pics..
I would prefer Venus over Mercury, red and hot - how about taking a hike in such an infernal landscape?






Mercury is rather sobering, looking so much like the moon - to be honest - I expected it to look a bit like Venus - there's something wrong with my puzzle-planets*:




*need to shoot a picture myself, can't find it on the net, but I have a 3D solar system puzzle set, and Mercury is brown/golden there...