The Moon snuck in front of the Sun this morning from the perspective of NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (Little SDO), sliding past the sunspots of active region 1422. For a sense of scale, those sunspots are easily several times larger than Earth! Read the rest of the story here. And check out a video of the…
Category: The Moon
A Little Lunar Levity
Sometimes astronauts just wanna have fun! The video above was taken during the Apollo 17 mission on December 11, 1972, when astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt went off in search of lunar samples during an EVA (short for Extra-Vehicular Activity.) Enjoying the 1/6 gravity, Jack felt the urge to break into song. And can…
First GRAIL Video Shows Moon’s “Dark Side”
See you on the dark side of the Moon*! NASA’s GRAIL mission has beamed back its first video of the far side of the moon. The imagery was taken on Jan. 19 by the MoonKAM aboard the mission’s “Ebb” spacecraft. GRAIL consists of two identical spacecraft, recently named Ebb and Flow, each of which is…
Moonset Over The Atlantic
Awesomeness. No words necessary. Via the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Video courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center.
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.
A December Moon
The midnight hour on December 11, 2011 brought a bright and vibrant halo around the Moon, not even 24 hours after its much-publicized total eclipse. It was all I could do to get my camera set up in time to snap a few photos; within the hour clouds rolled in and the effect was gone!…
The Gift of Apollo
Just watch this: “Once upon a time we soared into the Solar System, for a few years… then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was Apollo really about?” – Carl Edward Sagan, 1934–1996 Nothing more need be said.
Goodnight Moon
Another stunning view from the Space Station, this photo was taken by Expedition 28 astronaut Ron Garan on July 31, 2011 and shows the Moon seeming to sink into the ocean of air that is our life-supporting atmosphere. As the Moon passes behind Earth’s limb it appears to get squished because of light being refracted…
Did Earth Once Have Two Moons?
Our Moon. It lights up our nights, governs our tides and has inspired millions — perhaps billions -– of people throughout history to contemplate its nature, its influence on our lives (if any) and, of course, where it may have come from. The currently accepted theory is that over four and a half billion years ago our…
Rolling Stones in the Lake of Death
No, it’s not the title of a B-movie starring Keith Richards, it’s an image of lunar boulders resting in a line within a valley on the Moon. This valley, located in the central peak of Bürg crater, is filled with boulders ranging up to 70 feet across that have rolled downhill from either side. The…
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….
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,…
Lights in the Dark 