Today anyone with a point-and-shoot camera or even a newer cell phone can snap a decent picture of the Moon but of course there was a time when that certainly wasn’t the case. Go back to the late 1830s, when photography was in its infancy and methods for capturing light and shadows on physical media were…
Tag: moon
Researchers Find Evidence of Water Vapor on Ganymede in Historic Hubble Data
News from NASA on July 26, 2021 For the first time, astronomers have uncovered evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. This water vapor forms when ice from the moon’s surface sublimates — that is, turns from solid to gas. Astronomers re-examined Hubble observations from…
Here’s Our First Close-up Image of Ganymede in Over Two Decades!
The image data are starting to come in from NASA’s Juno spacecraft and if this is any indication, they’re going to be gorgeous! On Monday, June 7, 2021 the Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft passed within just over 1000 kilometers of Ganymede. This is the closest any spacecraft has come to the Solar System’s largest moon since May…
NASA’s Flying Observatory Found Water on the Moon During Its First Look
NASA and DLR’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy—a telescope-on-an-airplane called SOFIA for short—has detected yet more evidence of water on the Moon, this time in the form of H2O molecules possibly trapped within pieces of glass that form when meteorites strike the Moon’s surface. These particular findings, announced on October 26, 2020, focus on an…
Ganymede’s Polar Ice is ‘Disrupted’ by Jupiter’s Plasma
The first-ever infrared images of Ganymede’s north pole, taken on December 26, 2019 with the JIRAM instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft, show that the gigantic moon’s polar ice lacks any crystalline structure like the water ice we’re familiar with typically does here on Earth. This is a result of constant bombardment by charged plasma in…
Ice Hunt on the Moon Reveals Hidden Heavy Metal
Our beautiful Moon, serenely circling our world as it illuminates our evenings and tugs at our tides, is thought to have been born from a violent and catastrophic collision between a freshly-formed Earth and a Mars-sized wayward protoplanet almost four and a half billion years ago. This “giant impact hypothesis” is generally accepted because it…
Fun Fact: All the Planets in the Solar System Could Fit Between Earth and the Moon
It might seem a bit far-fetched but yes, it’s true: if you could line up all of the other planets in our Solar System in a row edge-to-edge (or more geometrically accurately, limb-to-limb) and for good measure even include Pluto, the entire queue would easily fit within the space between Earth and the Moon. (Not…
This is the Shadow of a Solar Eclipse Seen from Behind the Moon
During a total eclipse event on July 2, 2019 the shadow of the Moon passed across the southern Pacific Ocean and parts of Chile and Argentina. For viewers on Earth the event briefly turned the daytime sky to night as the Moon completely blocked the Sun, but for one spacecraft orbiting far beyond the Moon…
Proposed Trident Mission Could Explore Neptune’s Moon Triton in 2038
(News from NASA) Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft ever to have flown past Neptune, and it left a lot of unanswered questions. The views were as stunning as they were puzzling, revealing massive, dark plumes of icy material spraying out from Triton‘s surface. But how? Images showed that the icy landscape was young and…
NASA Selects Astrobotic Rover to Prospect for Water on the Moon’s South Pole
(News from NASA) NASA has awarded Astrobotic of Pittsburgh $199.5 million to deliver NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Moon’s South Pole in late 2023. VIPER will collect data – including the location and concentration of ice – that will be used to inform the first global water resource maps of the…
Mars Odyssey Orbiter Takes Moon Phobos’ Temperature
(News from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Three new views of the Martian moon Phobos have been captured by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter. Taken this past winter and this spring, they capture the moon as it drifts into and out of Mars’ shadow. Combined with three previous images, these observations represent waxing, waning and full views…
Enceladus Sprays its Ocean Into Space as it Awaits Our Return
Saturn’s 320-mile-wide moon Enceladus sprays its interior ocean into space in this picture, a color-composite made from images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on November 30, 2010 from the moon’s night side. The original images were captured in visible light filters and the result has been subjectively adjusted for contrast and saturation. South is pointed…
Lights in the Dark 