(News from NASA) As it sped away from Venus, NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft captured this seemingly peaceful view of a planet the size of Earth, wrapped in a dense, global cloud layer. But, contrary to its serene appearance, the clouded globe of Venus is a world of intense heat, crushing atmospheric pressure and clouds of…
Category: Planets
Juno and JEDI Deliver New Discoveries About Jupiter
Saturn has its rings, Mars has its rusty landscape, Earth has its whales, water, and wi-fi…and Jupiter has its Great Red Spot. The giant gas planet’s enormous orange storm—once over twice the diameter of Earth but today “only” about 1.3 times as wide—is one of the most distinctive planetary features in our Solar System. It’s…
Cassini Captures Saturn’s Lightning
This is a movie from the Cassini imaging team showing gigantic lightning flashes inside a storm cloud on Saturn! Depicting a 16-minute span of time, the movie shows lightning illuminating large, 300-km-diameter areas within the 3,000-km-long cloud. (The “zap zap” sounds were added later to represent the radio signals that were received by Cassini during…
Lights in the Dark 