Just wanted to say “thanks” to everyone who’s been visiting the site. As of the time of this writing the visitor count has hit 12,000. I hope you all are enjoying it as much as I am. 🙂 And thanks to all the missions current and upcoming, there’s so much more to come! – J
Finding Relief
On September 29, 2009 the MESSENGER spacecraft, soaring 10,000 miles above the northern hemisphere of Mercury, captured this image of the rugged terrain of our solar system’s smallest planet. Sharp hills, undulating ridges and craters of all sizes gouge the surface of Mercury, not only the smallest planet but also the densest and least explored,…
Sister Moons
Little Tethys is getting a lot of face time in front of Cassini’s lens. In this photo, from a raw image taken on October 17, Tethys passes across the hazy face of her much larger sister, Titan. 662-mile-wide Tethys is dwarfed by the 3,200-mile-wide Titan, although the distance that separates them in this image reduces…
Just Passing By
Tethys, shown in my previous post, orbits Saturn outside the rings in this animation made from 17 raw images taken by Cassini. After passing the dark side of Saturn Tethys follows the curve of the rings, and is passed on the “inside track” by the smaller Mimas (top). Meanwhile another moon, perhaps Atlas or Pandora,…
Full Moon
Here’s an amazing portrait of Tethys, a 662-mile-wide, airless and  heavily-cratered moon of Saturn. The photo was taken by Cassini on October 14, 2009, with the moon fully lit by the sun. Its high reflectivity (albedo) indicate a large amount of ice in its composition. I adjusted the image to bring out the details in…
A Rhea View
Here’s an amazingly detailed view of the extensively cratered surface of Rhea, Saturn’s second-largest moon, taken during a particularly close encounter by Cassini on October 13, 2009. About 950 miles wide Rhea is less than a third the size of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Unlike Titan, Rhea has no atmosphere at all to speak of…
Seeking Shelter
The exploration rover Opportunity has identified what seems to be another ferrous extraplanetary visitor resting on the sands of Meridiani Plains. The 19-inch-long meteorite, shown here, has been dubbed “Shelter Island” by the MER team. Opportunity’s tire tracks are visible in the upper left. Opportunity spent six weeks in September and October investigating “Block Island”,…
A Cratered Crescent Composition
The crescent of Saturn’s moon Tethys hovers serenely over a dimly-lit ringplane in this raw image, taken by the Cassini orbiter on October 11, 2009. Frigid, airless and heavily-cratered, Tethys is mostly composed of water ice and rock. It is 662 miles wide. Image: NASA/JPL/SSI
Can’t Catch Me!
Windswept Martian dunes create a somewhat humanoid, running gingerbread-man figure in this image from the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The dunes reside within a crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars. This week, the University of Arizona released thousands of new images from their HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) observations, taken…
Ring King
 The bright band in this image is a cross-section of a massive new ring discovered around Saturn, a cold, diffuse and incredibly thick band of material orbiting the planet 3.7 million miles out…..much farther out than any of the other rings and farther away even than most of Saturn’s moons. The ring is so…
Eagle’s Landing Site
This is what the Apollo 11 landing site looks like today from lunar orbit via NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Visible here is the remaining descent stage of the lander, a couple of left-behind scientific experiments and the tripod of a television camera as well as a dark trail of footprints to “Little West” crater left by…
First Rock From The Sun
While approaching the planet for the third flyby of its mission, the MESSENGER spacecraft took this photo of Mercury, crescent-lit by the sun and showing terrain that has never been imaged before. The region along the planet’s limb, the brightest area seen here, had yet to be mapped by the spacecraft’s cameras. It contains many…
Lights in the Dark 