A new image from MESSENGER showing craters amidst smooth plains. Acquired March 29, 2011. A new image from MESSENGER, released today March 30, 2011, shows relatively smooth plains near Mercury’s north pole dotted by some relatively large craters. Seen at an oblique angle, the low angle of sunlight emphasizes the relief of the…
First Image from Mercury Orbit!
It’s been over 11 days since MESSENGER established orbit around the planet Mercury, and we now have THE first image from orbit! The image above was obtained this morning, March 29 at 5:20am EDT as MESSENGER was above Mercury’s south pole – a portion of which has never previously been imaged by spacecraft. Click here…
Space Cell
I don’t usually post images from outside our solar system here on LITD, but this one was too good not to share! NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory made this image of the Tycho supernova remnant, an object in our Milky Way galaxy about 13,000 light years from Earth, in the constellation Cassiopeia. In visible light it…
One Earth. One planet. One hour.
Earth Hour. On Saturday, March 26 at 8:30pm – 9:30pm your local time, join millions of people who will show their support for our world’s environmental future by turning off the lights in your home or business for one hour. That’s it. Lights out. It’s a small reduction in power usage, but a big message…
In The Land of the Northern Lights
Can’t see the video below? Click here. After six months and 50,000 still images, photographer and video artist Ole Christian Salomonsen presents us with this masterpiece video of the stunning aurora borealis shimmering in the cold night skies over Tromsø, Norway. “A goal for me has been to try to preserve the real-time speed of…
From the LITD Archives: But What About Venus?
Originally posted on April 7, 2009, only two months after Lights in the Dark launched: I haven’t posted anything yet about our other neighboring planet, Venus, mostly because the currently active mission exploring it, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express orbiter, hasn’t been updating much with new images since I’ve begun this site. Still, Venus…
Mars à la Ansel Adams
Opportunity panorama of Santa Maria Crater rim. © Stuart Atkinson. As Opportunity wraps up her stay at Santa Maria crater, Stuart Atkinson leaves us with this wonderful “Ansel Adams style” panorama of the crater’s rim and dune-carpeted interior. “I’m very, very jealous of the people who will one day make a pilgrimage to this…
Sun Pass
Astronomy hobbyist and solar photographer extraordinaire Alan Friedman captured a wonderful image of the International Space Station transiting the edge of the Sun’s disc during a Winter Star Party in Florida on March 1, 2011. Taken with a solar telescope that images the Sun in hydrogen alpha light, the image above clearly shows the ISS…
Titan’s Spring Showers
It’s spring here in Earth’s northern hemisphere – and on Saturn’s cloudy moon Titan as well! This image, taken by Cassini in October of last year, shows bright clouds covering part of the moon’s equatorial and southern regions. These clouds were not always visible…in fact, they formed relatively quickly as Saturn and its moons moved…
Recycling the Empties
During a shuttle launch, the two white solid rocket boosters (SRB’s) attached to the main orange tank detach first* and fall back to Earth, landing in the Atlantic. These are retrieved by NASA ships and ferried back to be refurbished and refilled for the next mission…a process that requires the efforts of many experienced professionals,…
Success! Mercury has a new satellite named MESSENGER!
During a week of not-so-great news in the world (to understate things by quite a lot) it’s nice to report something good: the MESSENGER spacecraft has successfully established orbit around the planet Mercury, beginning its new 12-month mission of mapping and researching the innermost planet of our solar system! After traveling nearly 5 billion miles…
MESSENGER’s Day in the Sun
After 7 years and almost 5 billion of miles of traveling around the blistering inner solar system NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft is finally ready for the moment it was created for: orbital insertion around Mercury, the innermost planet! At 9pm EDT tomorrow MESSENGER will attempt to establish orbit and if successful will become the first spacecraft…
Lights in the Dark 