Originally published on May 16, 2009. LITD is almost 3 years old! This animation, made from a series of 8 raw images taken by Cassini on May 14, shows Saturn’s moon Mimas being eclipsed by another object…..a neighboring moon, perhaps? It’s not mentioned, but it definitely seems to be something of similar size, and round….
Author: Jason Major
Jason is a Rhode Island-based graphic designer, photographer, nature lover, and space exploration fanatic.
Mercury’s “Smooth” Plains
Mercury has a vast region of smooth volcanic plains surrounding its northern polar region, wrapping over a third of the way around the planet. But even though the plains are called smooth, they are still characteristically rugged – made obvious in this narrow-angle camera image from MESSEGER acquired December 13. Being an area close to…
More Evidence for a Wetter, “Volcanier” Mars
Spirit may have settled in for an eternal sleep on Mars but the data she’s sent back is still helping researchers piece together clues for a wetter history of the red planet! The image above, a false-color view from the “Home Plate” region where Spirit now sits, points to a feature geologists call a “bomb sag”….
Why Did Pluto Lose Its Planet Status?
Why isn’t Pluto considered a planet anymore?
ISS Performs a Lunar Pass
The right place at the right time… that’s all it took (along with some great camera skills!) for a NASA photographer at Johnson Space Center in Houston to capture some fantastic photos of the International Space Station (ISS) passing across the face of the moon! Read the rest of my article on Discovery News here.
2012 Hoaxes Debunked… by SCIENCE
It’s only January 5th and already nervous chatter about “end of the world” fears has gone into high gear… except, of course, among those who know that there’s nothing to worry about. Still, I have heard rumors of people, many young people still in school, who don’t know the real information and have heard only…
Spacecraft Discovers Mercury Truly Is a “Hollowed” Planet
…although not in the way some people mean by the term. 🙂 The latest featured image from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft shows the central peak of the 78-mile (138-km) – wide crater “Eminescu” surrounded by brightly-colored surface features called “hollows”. Actually tinted a light blue color, hollows may be signs of an erosion process unique to Mercury because of its…
Brightest ISS Pass of 2012!
Ok, I know it’s kind of a misleading title because it’s only 4 days into the new year but still, at magnitude -4.0 tonight’s flyover of the ISS was one of the brightest I’ve ever seen, this year or any other! At 6:28 p.m. CST, the ISS rose in the northeast and passed nearly exactly…
No Doom in 2012: Stop the Insanity!
Now that’s we’re officially three days into 2012, the ‘net is already abuzz with talk of impending doom on December 21 of this year. Luckily there are plenty of science sources that are more than happy to offer fact-based consolation that there is no actual evidence that anything cosmically bad is expected to occur on…
Lights in the Dark: 2011 in review
Thanks to all my readers and subscribers for making 2011 another great year! Here’s to more exploration in 2012! Here’s an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 150,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 6 days…
Happy New Year from the ISS!
2011 has given us many amazing images and videos of our planet from the International Space Station, which received its last US-built components this year during the STS-133 and 134 shuttle missions. The Expedition 30 crew now aboard the ISS will ring in 2012 from orbit, and they have recorded the video above to wish…
The Tail of a Comet Amongst the Stars
Nearly a week after its last photo event, here’s a shot of Comet Lovejoy seen from the Space Station on December 27. On its way back out into the solar system after its close run-in with the Sun on December 15, Lovejoy has since sprouted a beautiful gauzy new tail which now precedes it along…
Lights in the Dark 