Today is the autumnal equinox, when the Earth receives sunlight at its most direct angle relative to its equator and poles. As Earth orbits around the Sun over the course of a year, its axial tilt causes the angle of solar illumination to change – a predictable and regular change, but a change nonetheless. This…
Author: Jason Major
Jason is a Rhode Island-based graphic designer, photographer, nature lover, and space exploration fanatic.
Moons of Three
Saturn’s moons Dione and Titan lined up with the planet’s rings, seen here nearly edge-on, from the point of view of the Cassini spacecraft’s camera on September 17, 2011. This is a composite of three raw images taken with Cassini’s red, green and blue visible-light clear filters. Dione, 700 miles wide, is dwarfed by the…
A Splash of Sun
A large solar flare erupted from the Sun on September 7, 2011 and resulted in a coronal mass ejection (CME) and impressive display of magnetic activity, seen here in a video made from data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory’s AIA 304 imaging assembly. Spanning the course of about three hours over the 7th and 8th…
Around the World in 60 Seconds
Want to blow your mind? Watch this: Now watch it 14 more times for an idea of what the astronauts aboard the ISS get to see every day. No wonder after five months up there they still don’t want to come down! This gorgeous video was made by science teacher James Drake using images downloaded from…
Kepler Finds a Real-Life Tatooine
Can’t see the video below? Click here. Kepler, NASA’s exoplanet hunter extraordinaire, has confirmed the existence of the first planet orbiting two suns, not unlike Luke’s homeworld Tatooine from the Star Wars films! Unlike Tatooine, however, the planet –named Kepler-16b – is a cold Saturn-sized gas giant unlikely to harbor life. Still, it showcases the…
Senate Saves the JWST!
The 2012 fiscal year appropriation, marked up today by the Senate, allows for continued funding of the James Webb Space Telescope, enabling its launch in 2018! Ladies and gentlemen, it looks like this bird is going to fly. 🙂 Thanks to everyone who contacted their representatives and expressed their support of the JWST, to all…
To the Moon! GRAIL Successfully Launches on 9/10/11
Can’t see the video below? Click here. And away she goes! NASA’s GRAIL spacecraft launched successfully – and beautifully! – at 9:08 am EDT this morning from Cape Canaveral aboard a Delta II Heavy rocket. This was the third day for launch attempts after several scrubs due to high-altitude winds on both Thursday and Friday….
Oh What a Relief it Is!
With the sun striking Mercury’s landscape at a low angle, MESSENGER got a great look at the hilly topography of a region along the southwestern rim of the Caloris Basin. This particular area had only previously been imaged by MESSENGER under direct sunlight, and thus the relief in the terrain was not nearly as evident. Mercury’s…
Mars Express Gets the Delta Blues
ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has imaged yet more evidence of a watery past on Mars with what appears to be the remains of a river delta, seen here, located just within the 40-mile (65-km) -wide Eberswalde Crater. Formed over 3.7 billion years ago, Eberswalde Crater was in the top 4 list of possible landing sites…
Juno Looks Back Home
It’s not the famous “pale blue dot” image, but it sure is close: on August 26 the Juno spacecraft turned its JunoCam to take this image of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of about 6 million miles. From that distance, our world is effectively reduced to a bright fuzzy dot, with a smaller,…
High Over Hyperion
The Cassini spacecraft passed by Saturn’s spongy-looking moon Hyperion yesterday, August 25, and returned some very dramatic images like the one seen here – fascinating! At 15,000 miles this was Cassini’s second-closest approach to Hyperion. It will pass by again on September 16 at just over twice that distance. The closest it has come to Hyperion…
Granular Flows in a Copernican Crater
Sometimes flows of material on the Moon are made of light-colored material, sometimes they’re made of dark-colored material. This is definitely an example of the latter! This is a small portion of a Narrow-Angle Camera image taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing detail of “low-reflectance” granular material sliding down the wall of a crater…
Lights in the Dark 