ASTR-101 Mid-Term, Test 2 (Essay)

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Now for the big bit! Listed below are the four planets that we have so far studied, with an aspect written next to it. You need to research this aspect of the planet, and write 125 words on it. This means you will be writing 500 words in total. There is lots of information on each aspect on the Muggle interweb-y thing, so please use all resources available. Feel free to go back and read the prior lessons, but try and get new ideas.

Mercury - Surface Geology

Venus - Atmosphere and climate

Earth - Tectonic plates

Mars - Moons

Student Response

Count the words! Each section has exactly 125.

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Seen from a telescope, Mercury looks a lot like our moon. It's also pretty pockmarked, probably due to being pelted by meteors all the time. Analysis of the planet's surface has determined that it almost surely has ice (water). As water is the base for most potions and has been determined to be necessary in order to anchor life, this is very interesting, as it would suggest the possibility of life on Mercury. Mars also has evidence of the same. The muggles have only speculated its existence, but wizarding astronomers confirm absolutely the presence of ice on the surface of Mercury.--

Venus is hot! No, I don't mean the goddess, although that does also fit... I mean the planet. Geez. As I've mentioned briefly in a previous essay, Venus has an average temperature of  460 degrees Celsius. That is four and a half times the boiling point of water. It is also consistently that temperature - unlike the earth, where surface temperature depends on season, region, time, and weather, among other things, Venus' surface is pretty consistent. This is partially because of its axial tilt, which is 3 degrees to our 23, but it is also because Venus' atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. CO2 traps heat, which prevents it from leaving the planet. Therefore, unlike the earth, where sun exposure only briefly warms the surface, on Venus it stays, making it toasty even at night. 

A note: There are gases on our planet, including CO2, that trap heat too, they just aren't as plentiful.

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The crust of planet Earth is made up of plates that shift, slowly but noticeably, over time. For wizards, this caused some confusion and trouble, as some magic that relies on very accurate placement had a tendency to change unpredictably, even when factoring in the spin of the planet. In this case, the muggles beat us to the discovery in the mid-1900s - which makes it extremely recent. Until then, though our endeavours to study backwards in time gave us some idea that something was changing on the planet's surface over time (given that time travelers going more than a few thousand years at once had a strange, unexplained tendency of ending up in entirely the wrong places), it was attributed to 'quirks in the magic'.

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The moons of Mars are named Phobos and Deimos, personifications of fear and terror- as the constant companions of the god of war, they make perfect sense, as they are his sons in Greek myth, or rather, the sons of Ares, his greek counterpart, as Mars is a Roman god. Their existence was predicted by wizards since the early twelfth century, but only confirmed once our modern spellwork on telescopes came in, circa 1694. Word leaked to a muggle author, Jonathan Swift, who dramatized it in his novel Gulliver's Travels, published 1726. George Bonaccord, a french wizard of some small renown, also published a short story in 1750 that mentioned them, under the alias Voltaire. For muggles, Asaph Hall discovered proof of both in August 1877.