Tau.Neutrino said:
What Shapes Are Things In Outer Space?
It’s an orgy of geometry, here on Earth. You got all kinds of shapes: Squares, trapezoids, even the occasional rhombus. Apples, desk-chairs, and dandelions – just an abundance of shape-having stuff. Outer space, in contrast, is minimally decorated: asteroids, stars, planets, galaxies. Big-picture stuff. We know the Earth is round – or, at least, most of us do – but what about the other stuff? What shapes are twirling around up there, and why do they look like that?
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I’ll start with rotating bodies in hydrostatic equilibrium. In addition to spherical and oblate spheriod there is also peanut shaped. Many asteroids, comets and even some dwarf planets are peanut shaped.
Next, let’s look a jets, jets from pits in comets, comet tails, quasar jets, jets from “tiger stripes”.
From these we get fans, up to five tails, arcs, knots in jets.
Add to that volcanos on Io and you get mushrooms and streaks.
Add to that magnetic effects in aurorae and sunspots and you get curtains, loops, and helixes. And spicules.
Volcanos on Mars are domes.
Volcano on Ceres is a truncated come.
Now move on to orbital debris. The orbits of a single asteroid or comet are most frequently circular, elliptic, parabolic, hyperbolic, tadpole shape for Trojans, and horseshoe shape for Cruitne.
More particles interacting under gravity in ring systems generate rings, ring arcs, radial spokes and propeller shapes.
Star clusters and galaxies (as well as our own Kuyper Belt and Oort Cloud) give us irregular blobs, spheres, oblate ellipsoids, disc and coin shapes, as well as flat spirals and barred spirals. As well as bridges, arcs, rings and whirlpool shapes.
Planetary nebulae are often named after their shape, such as the spirograph nebula, red rectangle, red square, helix nebula, dumbell nebula.
Star formation processes involving the interaction of dust and the pressure from light gives 3-D tadpoles, pillars, hambergers.
Other nebulae of gas are named after other shapes. The veil nebula, the heart nebula, the horsehead nebula, the North America nebula (shaped like North America) among many others.
Planetary atmospheres give us ellipses, bands, Saturn’s hexagon, tornado and hurricane shapes, jet streams, puffy clouds, and all the shapes we associate with lightning.
Surfaces of Moons and Mars yield chasms, tunnels, pits, streaks, as well as the ubiquitous crater shapes, double craters, chains of craters, rays, branching channels (eg. on Titan), irregular patches. There is also the pattern of cracks on Europa. And let’s not forget mountains.
On top of that there are optical illusions, like the X and Y shapes on the Moon, the face shapes on Mars, the heart shape on Pluto, the constallations.
Is that comprehensive enough?