This encyclopedia provides a snapshot of our current geological
knowledge on solid-surface Solar System bodies. Each entry contains
information about the features' morphology, its interpretation,
proposed formation models, distribution and occurrence, planetary
or terrestrial analogs, and research history. The entries are fully
referenced. All image captions include original image IDs. More
than 600 named planetary feature types are discussed in the
encyclopedia, covering a wide range of scales--from micrometers to
global scale--and also include landform types (structural or
topographic features), parts of landforms, terrain types or surface
textures, surface patterns, and features identified at wavelengths
extending from visible to radio waves (e.g., albedo, thermal
infrared, and radar features). The book covers features formed by
impact, aeolian, magmatic, volcanic, tectonic, fluvial, lacustrine,
marine and coastal, mass movement, sedimentary, desiccation,
liquefaction, periglacial, glacial, nival, sublimation, collapse,
weathering, and selective erosion or other, including complex
processes. Depending on the information and formation models
available, the entries have different approaches. Some of them
discuss their subject from the point of view of the inferred
process or origin, others are morphology or description-based. As a
default, entries focus on extraterrestrial landforms, while also
mentioning their proposed terrestrial analogs. Most planetary
landforms are not body-specific, but some have no known terrestrial
counterparts. Named historic (obsolete) landform types are also
included to provide reference for previous key research papers. To
make it easier to find features with related origins, the
encyclopedia contains entries that list landforms based on their
formative processes. It also lists body-specific features on
Mercury (5 feature types), Venus (40), the Earth (13), the Moon
(15), Mars (87), Io (7), Europa (17), Callisto (7), Titan (9),
Triton (2), mid-sized satellites (8), and small bodies (3). Also
included are entries on the 51 planetary feature descriptor terms
approved by IAU.
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