First Alderaan, then Prometheus?? Here we go again! Saturn’s moon Mimas looks uncannily like the Death Star, and this animation by Diamond Sky Productions makes the resemblance even more apparent. Now witness the power of this fully-armed battle station! (No shepherd moons were harmed in the making of this video.) Video © Diamond Sky Productions,…
Tag: moon
Floes of Frozen Methane May Be Floating on Titan’s Lakes
Although surface temperatures on Titan are cold enough that methane can exist as a liquid, filling lakes and flowing in streams, it may sometimes get so cold that even the liquid methane and ethane freezes, forming floes and icebergs of frozen hydrocarbons. This Titanic revelation was announced today during the 221st American Astronomical Society meeting…
Cassini’s Christmas Gift: a Peek at Prometheus
Captured on Christmas Day, this is a raw image from Cassini showing Saturn’s F ring buckling inwards at two places due to the gravitational tug of its inner shepherd moon, Prometheus, seen at center. As the irregularly-shaped moon approaches the ring material in its looping orbit around Saturn it draws material from the ring in…
A Colorful Christmas Moon
Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone! Here’s your present from Lights in the Dark: a color-composite of Saturn’s moon Dione, lovingly made from raw images captured by the Cassini spacecraft on December 23. 700 miles (1120 km) wide, Dione (pronounced DEE-oh-nee) is covered pole-to-pole in craters and is crisscrossed by deep chasms and long, bright…
A River Runs Through It (and when I say “It” I mean Saturn’s moon Titan)
No, you’re not looking down at the Amazon or the Nile (although the confusion would be understandable)… this is actually a river on an entirely different world: Saturn’s moon Titan! Radar imaging by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed what appears to be a long river system, complete with side-branching tributaries, meandering across the surface of…
Titan: Dabbling in the Occult
Back in December of 2001, Saturn’s moon Titan passed in front of two background stars (called an “occultation”) from the point of view of the Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory. Astronomers used the incredible resolving ability of the 5-meter telescope’s adaptive optics to watch the event, which revealed the diffraction of the stars’ light through…
Experience Eclipse Totality (VIDEO)
Totality — that brief period during a solar eclipse when the Moon is completely centered in front of the Sun’s disk — is a truly amazing sight, so much so that many people who have seen it once (a privileged group that doesn’t include me, sadly!) will travel across the globe in an effort witness…
Titan: Saturn’s Glow-In-The-Dark Moon
Titan just never ceases to amaze. Saturn’s largest moon, it’s wrapped in a complex, multi-layered nitrogen-and-methane atmosphere ten times thicker than Earth’s. It has seasons and weather, as evidenced by the occasional formation of large bright clouds and, more recently, an area of open-cell convection forming over its south pole. Titan even boasts the distinction…
Curiosity Leaves its “Bootprint”
In an image reminiscent of the historical photo of Buzz Aldrin’s boot print in the lunar soil, Curiosity leaves a wheel scuff in a wind-formed ripple at a site called “Rocknest”. The rover’s right Navigation camera took this image of the scuff mark on the mission’s 57th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 3, 2012). For…
A Daytime Moon on Mars
A raw image taken on September 21 by Curiosity’s right Mastcam shows a daytime view of the Martian sky with a crescent-lit Phobos in the frame… barely visible, yes, but most certainly there. Very cool! The image above is a crop of the original, contrast-enhanced and sharpened to bring out as much detail as possible….
Take a Tour of the Moon (and give a wink for Neil!)
In honor of International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN) I invite you to see the Moon like never before, with this beautiful HD tour that takes you around our natural satellite as it’s seen by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. According to the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s David R. Kring, “The scenes in the video are…
Blue Marble, Pale Blue Dot…whatever you call it, it’s Home
35 years ago today, September 18, 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft turned its camera homeward just about two weeks after its launch, capturing the image above from a distance of 7.25 million miles (11.66 million km). It was the first time an image of its kind had ever been taken, showing the entire Earth and Moon together…
Lights in the Dark 