It’s been a while since I posted any moon shadow images but they’re always cool to look at, since they add another dimension to a scene that can sometimes be hard to put into context. This image, taken by Cassini on January 10 and released today, shows the 12-mile-wide shepherd moon Pan cruising along within the…
Head for the Hills!
…or, in Opportunity’s case, away from the Hills. The “Chocolate Hills“, that is…a pair of rocks on the rim of the rover’s latest exploration target, Concepción crater. Opportunity has spent a couple of weeks investigating them and other rocks in another fascinating side trip on its journey across the Meridian Plains. It is now moving…
This Week in Space
The ISS gets a room with a view, Obama gives a shoutout to the Station astronauts while former NASA administrator Michael Griffin contemplates NASA’a future. Also Spirit’s new status, Hubble images, private sector spaceflight, blimp tourism and much more news and discoveries in the latest episode of This Week in Space. Enjoy! This Week in…
Seeing Spots
A gorgeous photo of our Sun by Alan Friedman, taken from his location in Buffalo, NY and uploaded to his site on February 7, shows a huge string of sunspots and an energetic region of prominences, as well as the granules and spicules that create the Sun’s surface texture. Sunspot 1045, the string seen here,…
Focus on Phobos
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express has begun a series of flybys of Mars’ largest – albeit still very small – moon, Phobos. Begun on February 16 (2010) Mars Express will perform closer and closer approaches until, on March 3, it will pass by at an altitude of only 31 miles, giving us the most…
The Trailing Trojan
In a bit of more flyby goodness here’s a photo of Calypso, taken in ultraviolet light, showing nice shading on its surface and some interesting streak patterns that seem to follow the contours of the potato-shaped moon. This image was taken on Saturday, February 13, at a distance of about 14,000 miles. 19-mile-long Calypso is…
That’s No Moon…
…it’s a space sta– oh nevermind. It is a moon. 😉 Photos are in from Cassini’s flyby of Mimas on Saturday and they don’t disappoint! The 250-mile wide inner moon of Saturn performed very well in front of Cassini’s cameras, displaying its heavily-cratered surface and showing off its trademark Herschel crater; at 88 miles wide…
A Traveler’s Guide to the Planets on National Geographic Channel
This is a great series airing over the next few nights on the National Geographic Channel…the above is a segment recapping Cassini’s approach to Saturn in 2004. Revisit the excitement of the mission team as they successfully establish orbit and see some of the amazing first images sent back by Cassini. The shows are well-made…
Inside a Black Hole
Unlike the typical artist’s portrayal of a black hole as being surrounded by a massive glowing accretion disk of inwardly-swirling matter, like some sort of galactic bathtub drain, this scenario shows a rather naked-looking black hole exerting a lensing effect on the background field of stars. This is a result of a new simulator application…
Voyager’s Valentine
On February 14, 1990, after nearly 13 years of traveling the outer solar system the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed the orbit of Pluto and turned its camera around to take a series of photos of the planets. The image above shows those photos, isolated from the original series and labeled left to right, top to…
A WISE Discovery
It’s small and faint and blurry but it’s definitely there… the first comet identified by WISE, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. At the center of the image is a fuzzy red dot. This dot is a 1.2-mile-wide ball of water ice and rock dubbed P/2010 B2 (WISE) – or just Comet WISE for short –…
Signs of a Hidden Sea
Cassini mission scientists have more support for the existence of an underground ocean on Enceladus, in the form of negatively-charged ions present in the moon’s southern ice geysers. In a report released February 8, 2009, the Cassini Science League announced that researchers have identified these ions using the spacecraft’s plasma spectrometer data from recent flybys…
Lights in the Dark 