Jason Major

A Close Pass!

2011 MD, a newly-discovered asteroid estimated to be between 9 and 45 meters (30 – 150 feet) wide, will pass by Earth at a distance of about 17,700 km (11,000 miles) on Monday, June 27. That’s 23 times closer than the Moon! The asteroid was discovered on June 22, 2011 by MIT’s Lincoln Near Earth…

Mars by Student Request

This nearly 600-foot-wide pit is located on the southeastern side of Pavonis Mons, a large extinct volcano in Mars’ Tharsis region. This detailed image was taken by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The idea for this close-up was suggested to the HiRISE team by a team of seventh graders at Evergreen Middle…

Moon Noir

Here’s another intriguing look at Helene, lit by sunlight from the right while some reflected light from its own highlands illuminates the interior of a valley/crater. Its dark side appears pitch black against the slightly brighter region of space behind, possibly lightened by the diffuse reflected light from ice particles in Saturn orbit. This is…

A Close Pass of Helene

On June 18, 2011, the Cassini spacecraft performed a flyby of Saturn’s moon Helene. Passing at a distance of 4,330 miles, it was its second-closest pass of the icy little moon.

Big Sisters

Here’s a color-composite image of Rhea and Titan, Saturn’s largest moons. Made from raw images acquired by the Cassini spacecraft on June 16, 2011, this really shows the vast difference in size and appearance of the two moons. Rhea, seen in the foreground, is an icy, airless and heavily-cratered world 950 miles wide. Titan, on…

The Final Countdown: A #NASATweetup Journal

#2: My video inroduction So the folks over at The Space Crowd are working on a video project and asked for some video submissions from the Tweetup attendees. I’m no videographer by any means but they just wanted a quick who-are-you introduction, where you tell everyone about your feelings regarding being chosen for the event….

A “Feast of New Observations” from Mercury

This image, a color view of the northwestern rim of the 32-mile-wide Degas crater on Mercury, is just one of the most recent images to come in from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft. It has been in orbit around Mercury since March 18 – just under three months – and already its findings have revolutionized what we…

The Final Countdown: A #NASATweetup Journal

#1: I made it! On July 8, less than a month from now, the last remaining space shuttle is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral. The STS-135 mission will bring supplies and parts up to the International Space Station and will be the historic conclusion of the 30-year-long shuttle program. Unless otherwise rescheduled, at 11:40am…

One Year of Moon

Can’t see the video below? Click here. This awesome animation by the visualization folks at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center shows the phases and position of the Moon throughout 2011 – a full year of the Moon compressed into 2.5 minutes! What’s really interesting is how you can see the wobble of the Moon in…

Jupiter: Guardian of the Solar System

Can’t see the video below? Click here. Here’s a great presentation made for the NOAA and NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center about the giant planet Jupiter, part of the Science of a Sphere series. It shows the size and power of the huge gas planet and how it dominates its region of the solar system. Indeed,…

From the LITD Archives – VLT: A Space Opera

Can’t see the movie below? Watch on YouTube here. Here’s an enchanting video by the European Southern Observatory highlighting the discoveries of their Very Large Telescope (VLT) array, high in the mountains of the Atacama Desert in Chile. The Atacama is the driest place on Earth, far from the light pollution of major cities, and thus…

Look on the Bright Side

Here’s a color-composite image of Saturn’s two-toned moon Iapetus; its Saturn-facing light side is seen here facing to the lower left. Iapetus is 1,471 km (914 miles) wide. The raw images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft on June 6, 2011 and received on Earth June 8, 2011. The camera was pointing toward Iapetus from…