Another fantastic image of one of my favorite subjects from the Cassini mission: the little shepherd moon Daphnis and its icy wake within the Keeler gap. This is an adjusted version of a raw image taken Saturday, July 11, and received at the imaging center in Boulder, CO later the same day. See the original…
Month: July 2009
Subtle Shades
The intricate structure of Saturn’s rings is seen here in this raw image from Cassini, taken yesterday. This (I believe) shows the dark material of the Cassini Division (bottom) below the brighter bands of the A ring (middle to top). I could be mistaken though, and this is instead the inner section of the B…
A MONDo Idea
Interesting article from New Scientist: A Phantom Menace to Dark Matter Theory by Marcus Chown. In a nutshell, there’s a new theory that tries to explain why stars aren’t chucked out of the galaxy when they are near the edges, like a little kid on the playground merry-go-round. (Hey, it happens.) Newtonian physics say that this…
Rhea View
A fascinating bit of work by Gordan Ugarkovic, this is a brief false-color animation of 950-mile-wide Rhea, second-largest moon of Saturn. Rhea is very reflective, indicating that it is made up of a lot of water ice, and is also heavily cratered (clearly evident here.) Water ice behaves like rock at the low temperatures that…
What a Relief
This is a video “flyover” of the images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, riding along the moon’s terminator between night and day. The shallow angle of sunlight makes for very nice relief of the lunar surface. More on the LRO Mission here. Image/animation: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University
Lunar Landscape
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has opened its eyes and sent back its first images since establishing orbit around the moon on June 23. The image above is from a region called Mare Nubium – “Sea of Clouds” – and is on the Earth-facing side of the moon. “Because of the deep shadowing, subtle topography is…
Phoenix’s Sense of Snow
The results are in: Mars has (or had) a favorable environment for life. Microbial life, sure, but life nonetheless. This is according to the results posted in this week’s edition of the journal Science, from the Phoenix Mars polar lander. The data indicates that the region around the lander has subsurface layers of perchlorate, a…
Rings Around Uranus
This ghostly image was taken by a Chilean ground-based telescope in 2002. It shows the enigmatic gas giant Uranus in near-infrared light, 7 of its 27 known moons visible. (For a labeled version of this image noting the moons, click here.) Seventh planet from the sun, Uranus’ year is 84 Earth-years long. Like the other…
Shepherds Passing
Without as much as a wave shepherd moons Prometheus and Atlas pass by each other, each on their own paths around the rings. Prometheus, casting a long shadow, pulls at the F ring’s bands of material while smaller Atlas guards the edges of the A ring. The larger is 93 miles across at its…
Lights in the Dark 