The Cassini Imaging Team has released this image, a stunning portrait of Saturn made from 75 separate wide-angle exposures taken during the ringed planet’s spring equinox on August 12, 2009. The specific angle of sunlight during the equinox makes the shadow of Saturn’s expansive rings appear as a pencil-thin line across the cloudtops at the…
In Fact, It’s Cold As Hell
When you look up at the moon, you’re looking at what is now believed to be the coldest place in the solar system, according to recent data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Craters at the moon’s south pole stay in constant shadow, their rims blocking sunlight from reaching their interiors. In these areas of permanent…
Cracking the Surface
Images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor satellites show dry, cracked surfaces within Martian craters. Previously thought to have been caused by subsurface permafrost contractions, it’s now believed these parched surfaces indicate the remains of dried lake beds. Similar to features found in dry lake beds on Earth, the cracks on…
A Beautiful Demise
I don’t usually post images of deep-space objects here but I had to make an exception for this one. With its most recent set of optics, installed in May 2009 during the STS-125 servicing mission (SM4), the Hubble Space Telescope is returning amazingly detailed images of distant, exotic objects – like the butterfly-shaped planetary nebula NGC 6302,…
Look on the Bright Side
Another view of Saturn’s moon Iapetus (see previous post) shows the brighter surface illuminated by the sun, with a section of the darker surface visible near the moon’s equator. This dual-coloration of the 914-mile-wide moon was first observed by Giovanni Cassini in 1671. Noticing that the moon was only visible when on the western side…
Next Stop: Jupiter
NASA’s “What’s Up” video series highlights Jupiter this month, and explains the upcoming Juno mission set to launch in August 2011.
Gully Gee…
One of thousands of new images released on September 2 from the University of Arizona’s HiRISE project, this amazingly detailed image shows the dramatic effects of erosion on the steep sides of Hale Crater on Mars. Whether or not these channels were caused by liquid water or a dry process is still under investigation. It’s…
A Two-Faced Crescent
914-mile-wide Iapetus, one of Saturn’s 61 moons, is crescent-lit in this raw image from the Cassini spacecraft. Iapetus orbits Saturn at over 2 million miles away, 8 times farther than our moon is from us. Its surface is marked by a side covered in bright, reflective material and a side covered by dark material. The…
Spokes and Shadows
This animation, made up of several raw images from the Cassini spacecraft, shows the mysterious features known as spokes in Saturn’s B ring. These spokes, thicker regions of material within the otherwise uniform rings, were first observed by Voyager in 1980 and have yet to be have their mechanics explained by scientists. Theories range from…
Into the Blue
Discovered by philosophy professor Ted Stryk in the archives of Voyager 2 image data, four separate images were combined to show the shadow of Despina – lightened for better visibility – crossing over the sky blue face of Neptune. Neptune, now officially the outermost planet in our solar system, was visited by Voyager 2 in…
Rolling Stones
This closeup of a mapping image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the rolling, bouncing trails left by lunar boulders as they travelled down the slopes of Tsiolkovskiy Crater’s central peak. These boulders, several meters across, lost their footing in the dusty lunar soil at some point and rolled downhill to where they lay now….
A Fresh Perspective
Prometheus’ shadow slices through the strands of Saturn’s F ring in this low-angle view from the Cassini orbiter. The sunlit shepherd moon is a bit overexposed in this image, in order to capture the bands of the rings. This view is looking outwards across the edge of the B ring (at lower left), the darker…
Lights in the Dark 