Exogeology ROCKS!

You’re probably wanting to know, just what is it that exogeologists do? What do they look at? Why? And what do they find there? Well, let me start by giving you a tour of the Solar System.

The Solar System is a big place, and there’s still a lot we don’t know about it. But we do know where to start looking. We’ve found eight planets, some dwarf planets, comets, and numerous asteroids.

In our solar system we have, in order from the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, the inner or “terrestrial” (Earth-like) planets. These are all rocky planets that have similar geology to Earth. Then there is the asteroid belt, a ring of asteroids (big chunks of rock in a ring between the inner and outer planets) orbiting the Sun. And next out there are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the outer or “jovian” (Jupiter-like, the gas giants) planets. And much further out, there is the Kuiper belt, a ring of asteroids and dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris.  There also comets, which have orbits that take them very far from the Sun for years, and then for a short time bring them into the inner solar system. Comets are made of ice and rock, and are sometimes called “dirty snowballs” because of their composition.

And what about the Moon? Well, exogeologists also study Earth’s moon, as well as other planets’ moons. The Moon is covered in craters, made by meteorites (asteroids and other space rocks that hit another object). There are dark areas on the moon that don’t have many craters though, and those are called maria. A mare is a place where a large meteor hit and molten lava seeped up through cracks made by the impact, which then cooled to become one of the dark maria we see on the moon today.

Some of the other planets have moons too, in fact, Jupiter has 63 and Saturn has over 200! Moons can be very different from each other. Some have atmospheres (like Saturn’s Titan), and some are just asteroids and are strange shapes and have lots of craters (Like Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos).

There are lots of planets to explore, and that’s what I do! I like finding out new information about everything in the solar system!

Hi, this is Petra Stone. I am a fictional character whose posts are written by Zoë Bentley. I’m here to tell you about what I do as an exogeologist. Look for for more posts soon!