After much anticipation, this just in: an amazingly detailed image from the March 7 flyby of Phobos! As Phil Plait might say, click to emphobosize. 😉 See more info and a couple more similar images on the ESA’s Mars Express site. Phobos sure has an interesting surface texture. It’s almost as if boulders have been…
Tag: ESA
Fatal Attraction
This video from SOHO spanning several days’ worth of time shows the activity of the Sun’s corona as stellar energy is streamed out into space against a passing background field of stars…and then right in the final moments we see it: the bright trail of a comet as it makes its final journey straight into…
Phobos Flyby Success
No need to fear, Phobos is here! (That’s a particularly bad pun on Phobos being the Greek god of fear……er…nevermind.) Yesterday’s flyby of Mars’ tiny moon was a success, as the animation below shows using actual data from the event. This latest pass only utilized the ASPERA instrument, which studies the way Phobos interacts with…
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…
Solar Cover-Up
ESA’s new Proba-2 solar observation satellite captured this stunning image of the annular eclipse that as visible across Africa and Asia on January 15. In an annular eclipse the moon is further from the Earth than it would be during a total eclipse, so part of the Sun remains visible. This eclipse has been the…
Remembering Titan
This image was first released five years ago today, on January 15, 2005. It shows the murky surface of Saturn’s moon Titan as seen by the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe after it made its historic descent through the moon’s thick haze and clouds and landed in a frozen plain of methane mud and icy…
And still they come…
Watching a video of SOHO images today, I noticed two more comets diving toward the Sun (located behind the white circle on the blue disc), on the 8th and the 9th. Both came from the same direction, from the lower left as seen in the still above. Watch the video here. With over 1500 comets…
Fear and Dread
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express has captured footage of Mars’ two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, passing each other in what is known as a “mutual event”. Although the moons themselves are in no special positions the images are noteworthy, being the first time the moons have been photographed passing each other. Mars Express’…
Solar Power
This video taken by the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft, a joint project by NASA and the European Space Agency, shows a large bright active region on the Sun rotating into view on November 13. These areas, many times larger than Earth, expel large amounts of solar material and energy in the form of…
South Pacific
Another beautiful image of Earth from the Rosetta spacecraft’s OSIRIS imaging system, showing swirling clouds in an anticyclone over the South Pacific. The false-color composite is a portion of a larger view of the planet, taken as Rosetta flew by Earth on November 13. It is a combination of image data taken through the orange,…
Good Morning Antarctica
Last night the Rosetta spacecraft took this stunning image of Earth, showing the rosy crescent of the southern pole lit by the summer sun. (It’s nearing the height of summer in Antarctica, when the sun never fully sets for several months.) Click for a larger view. Absolutely beautiful. I rotated the image so that south…
Hello, World
All I can say is ” 🙂 “. On its way back for its third and last flyby on Nov. 13, 2009, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft captured this beautiful photo of our planet. The illuminated crescent shows the south polar region, with some of Antarctica’s sea ice reflecting brightly through the swirling clouds….
Lights in the Dark 