After nearly 5 months in orbit around Vesta, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned some incredibly detailed data about the composition and structure of what was once surely considered an asteroid. But now scientists are starting to have second thoughts about what exactly Vesta is… is it really an asteroid? Or is it more like a…
Tag: astronomy
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!…
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…
Senate Saves the JWST!
The 2012 fiscal year appropriation, marked up today by the Senate, allows for continued funding of the James Webb Space Telescope, enabling its launch in 2018! Ladies and gentlemen, it looks like this bird is going to fly. 🙂 Thanks to everyone who contacted their representatives and expressed their support of the JWST, to all…
Daphnis in Full Color
If you’ve been following along with Lights in the Dark since the beginning, you may know that this is one of my favorite subjects of space imagery: the shepherd moon Daphnis, traveling in its orbit around Saturn within the 26-mile-wide Keeler Gap. Recently color-calibrated by Gordan Ugarvovic, this is a true-color version of an image…
Got Questions About Comet Elenin?
NASA’s got answers. For some reason, ever since it was first discovered last December, Comet Elenin has been surrounded by a lot of misinformation regarding the danger it poses to Earth. True, it will be swinging around the Sun in a path that takes it “relatively” close to Earth and the other inner planets in…
Where The Craters Have No Name
The latest in a series of new images coming in almost daily from the MESSENGER spacecraft currently in orbit around Mercury, this is a look at an unnamed crater on Mercury’s southern hemisphere. The smooth crater floor is likely due to impact melt that formed during the collision that produced the crater. Also visible are…
Pluto’s New Moon
Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have identified a new moon in orbit around distant Pluto. Estimated to be between 8 to 21 miles (13 to 31 km) in diameter the moon has been designated P4… at least until a more fitting name can be decided upon. P4 lies between the orbits of Nix and…
Big Sisters
Here’s a color-composite image of Rhea and Titan, Saturn’s largest moons. Made from raw images acquired by the Cassini spacecraft on June 16, 2011, this really shows the vast difference in size and appearance of the two moons. Rhea, seen in the foreground, is an icy, airless and heavily-cratered world 950 miles wide. Titan, on…
From the LITD Archives – VLT: A Space Opera
Can’t see the movie below? Watch on YouTube here. Here’s an enchanting video by the European Southern Observatory highlighting the discoveries of their Very Large Telescope (VLT) array, high in the mountains of the Atacama Desert in Chile. The Atacama is the driest place on Earth, far from the light pollution of major cities, and thus…
What’s Up for June?
Can’t see the video below? Click here. Jane Houston Jones from JPL tells us What’s Up For June in space exploration! (Hint: it’s solar system collisions!) The early solar system was a messy place and asteroids, moons and planets frequently collided and these collisions and impacts left scars we can see. Credit: NASA / JPL
Crescent Mercury
MESSENGER’s latest image of Mercury!
Lights in the Dark 