Most Interesting/Most Boring Objects in the Solar Options

[volcanopele]

Great list, Superstring, I think you and I would get along just fine I think if you are going for geologically active worlds I would probably put Pluto aside for just a bit. How much its surface looks young as the result of endogenic activity and how much of it is due to exogenic processes like active glaciers remains to be seen. Cthulhu Regio certainly looks quite ancient (with more glacially eroded, cratered terrains to the north of Tombaugh Regio). Right now, I would put Triton above Pluto given its much younger surface (overall).

[Superstring]

Great list, Superstring, I think you and I would get along just fine I think if you are going for geologically active worlds I would probably put Pluto aside for just a bit. How much its surface looks young as the result of endogenic activity and how much of it is due to exogenic processes like active glaciers remains to be seen. Cthulhu Regio certainly looks quite ancient (with more glacially eroded, cratered terrains to the north of Tombaugh Regio). Right now, I would put Triton above Pluto given its much younger surface (overall).

Yeah, that is true -- although I count active glaciers as, well, activity (even if it doesn't involve eruptions). Ranking Pluto higher was splitting hairs. Triton, in the part we've seen, has active geysers and a younger surface overall, but lacks the mountains and glacial flows. They're both fascinating worlds, for sure.

[HSchirmer]

Most interesting, Methone, the Mork-from-Ork moon of Saturn.
It's 1-2 km diameter. weights basically nothing, and is completely unlike any other body in the solar system.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methone_%28moon%29

That image is in focus.
E.g., it's not a smooth oval image with a two-tone surface because
the picture is out of focus and the light/dark line is a jpeg artifact.
It IS a smooth oval with a two tone surface.

It has incredibly low mass for the volume it takes up.
How light? Rough-back-of-the-envelope calculations-
So light that it must be empty space. Snow-fluff, or hollow.
Roughly the same volume to weight ratio as an aircraft carrier.

[stevesliva]

How much its surface looks young as the result of endogenic activity and how much of it is due to exogenic processes like active glaciers remains to be seen.

New press release today about accounting for Pluto's rate of Nitrogen loss, and how endogenic processes might be the source for it...
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-A...p?page=20150812
and this...
https://blogs.nasa.gov/pluto/2015/08/10/atm...lutos-nitrogen/

[Habukaz]

Hmm, tough task. Of the objects that have been visited, these I find the most interesting:

1. Europa
2. Titan
3. Enceladus
4. Triton
5. Venus
6. Pluto
7. Mars
8. Ganymede
9. Charon
10. Io

I am not familiar enough with the science of gas and ice giants to rank Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. List may change radically as new information is learnt about the bodies in the solar system.


Most interesting objects that have not been visited yet:

1. Eris
2. Sedna
3. Haumea
4. Makemake
5. 2007OR10
6. <insert continuing list of the largest KBOs, typically sorted according to mass and diameter>

All objects are interesting when the solar system and the universe is viewed as a whole, since they are all pieces of the larger puzzle. But many pieces are almost identical, so in their own right, they might not be that interesting.

[Antdoghalo]

Sorry to necropost but this is a fun topic

Most interesting:
1. Earth (obviously cause it has the most geologic processes going on at once)
2. Mars (Most extreme terrain aside from perhaps Miranda and possible geologic activity ongoing)
3. Titan (Basically if Earth was made of ice)
4. Venus (Lots of interesting terrain going on)
5. Europa (activity and a form of art)
6. Io (Lots of color and activity)
7. Enceladus (activity)
8. Triton (different types of geologic activity)
9. Miranda (What kind of geologic activity happened here?)
10. Ganymede (Looks like a jigsaw puzzle)

Most boring objects:
1. Umbriel (for an object its size, it sure lacks any geologic activity, the whole thing looks like the lunar highlands)
2. Rhea (Dione's less interesting sibling)
3. Mimas (cool you got a crater but geologically boring)
4. Tethys (see 3)
5. Oberon (not much happened here, a couple cool rayed craters is it)
6. Callisto (cool colors, just craters though)
7. Vesta (aside from a couple possible long dead volcanoes, its super dead)
8. Mercury (no color)
9. Moon (no color, maria bump it down from 8)
10-some millions. almost all asteroids and satellites smaller than Vesta and Pallas aside from ringed Centaurs, just a featureless clump of boulders shaped into potatoes that beg to be mapped

Stuff we gotta visit:
1. Sedna (coldest thing out there!)
2. Psyche (in progress, iron asteroid!)
3. Chiron (those rings and any possible moons!)
4. 2005 HC4 (this thing probably turns to soft plastic at perihelion)
5. Whatever interstellar comet enters the solar system next
6. Apophis after 2029 Earth encounter (that things gotta have rocks jostled around from tidal interactions)
7. Haumea (lotta bodies to explore at once!)
8. Northern hemisphere of Uranus moons
9. Northern hemisphere of Triton
10. Amalthea when Juno does an end of mission plunge (this thing is redder than Mars!)

[Phil Stooke]

Hi Antdoghalo.

Most of the worlds you say are boring are not really so boring after all. In some cases like Umbriel it's because our images are very poor compared with many other worlds. Better images would probably make it look a lot more interesting, especially the crater with the very bright floor.

In other cases you have just not seen the most interesting stuff. Take Mimas as an example. Here are three links that make it look a lot more interesting:

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/1264...false-colors-1/

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/1492...ater-annotated/

https://www.planetary.org/space-images/closeup-on-herschel

In the last one., be sure to click into the high resolution version. Look at the strange albedo markings on the crater wall.

There's a lot more going on with Mimas than a quick glance suggests. There are linear grooves which hint at a bit of tectonic activity, and this brand new paper:

Rhoden, A.R. and Walker, M.E., 2022. The case for an ocean-bearing Mimas from tidal heating analysis. Icarus, p.114872.

suggests the possibility of an internal ocean, rather unexpectedly.



So I am going to counter you by suggesting (paraphrasing Larry Soderblom) - there's no such thing as a boring object in the solar system.

Phil