For several months during the year, in the twilight hours of early evening or the hours before sunrise, one can catch a glimpse of one or more bright planets. Reflecting light from our Sun, the brightest of our nine planets can be easily seen amid the backdrop of stars and blackness of the sky.
A rare treat to backyard astronomers who view the skies, the planets in our solar system are especially well studied by astronomers and planetary geologists. The motions of the planets have been well established for centuries, the chemical abundances in their atmospheres have been analyzed more recently and the changes in their structure, atmospheres and physical appearance have been noted with repeated observations from ground- and space-based observatories.
But we not only had glimpsed every characteristic and touched most of the planets in the Solar System, but we have also looked and studied the stars and their systems far beyond our small system, or galaxy itself.
We have been amazed by all the types of planets and stars we have found, some too close to their star, some too far, some too big or small and some revolting around a dying pulsar...
We gave them names, we quietly observed them, and at some point we knew so much about them as we know about our neighbour planets.
Humanity evolved and grew wise, and we learned how to live in harmony with our enviroment, we colonized the space and the planets in the Solar System, we exploited the resources on the satellites of Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. We finally reached the total colonization of the Solar System.
And as it is unevitable, we focused our sights in those extrasolar systems we studied from our sacred home Earth. We created great technology and used it for exploration, trying to answer our endless number of questions about everything.
In the process, we learned and discovered great things, one of them, and probably the most remarcable one, was the element know as Iridium 08-S, a marvelous variant substance of the Iridium.
The Iridium 08-S was found by a miner group on Amalthea, one of Jupiter's satellites. Our curiosity about this indestructible metal leaded us to the construction of a spacial research center near Amalthea. We found out that the Iridium 08-S could only be harvested every 23.4 years, during Amalthea's peak at the Jovian Radiation Field, when it is extremely charged with energy produced by the Jovian magnetosphere. When this happens, the normal Iridium compound suffers a high energy transformation, releasing gigantic amounts of energy and in the process, making visible bright green patches on the major slopes of Amalthea. After the energy explosion the standard Iridium turns into Iridium 08-S, though only for a limited period of time (1.4 years).
More to come!
