Rhea and Titan, Saturn’s two largest moons, align in Cassini’s lens in this image taken on November 19, 2009. I level-adjusted and rotated the original raw image file…”north” would be to the right in this view. Rhea is 949 miles wide, cold, icy and airless. Titan, 3,200 miles wide, is also frigidly cold but is…
Tag: NASA
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…
Enceladus and Rhea
In another stately pas de deux as seen from the point of view of the Cassini spacecraft, moons Rhea and Enceladus slip past each other in their eternal travels around Saturn. This animation is made up of 20 raw images from Cassini, taken on November 15, level-adjusted and rotated 90º clockwise. Enceladus is about to…
Water On The Moon!
The conclusive results are in….the LCROSS mission has successfully found water on the lunar surface! Although the plume from the satellite’s upper-stage rocket impact into Cabeus crater at the moon’s south pole was not immediately visible, there was still enough ejected material to be analyzed by LCROSS’ instruments. After reviewing the data over the past…
Now With 6% More Mercury!
With the third and last flyby of Mercury by the MESSENGER spacecraft, NASA scientists have now imaged nearly 98 percent of the surface of the first planet from our sun. The photo above shows a color-calibrated view of a crescent Mercury, acquired on September 29. This will be the last close-up color image of Mercury…
Photojacked!
In a bit of sisterly silliness, Rhea appears to have photojacked an otherwise lovely portrait of her big sister Titan in this image from Cassini! An honest mistake, I’m sure….the smaller moon quickly realized her transgression and exited the scene shortly after: 🙂 In all seriousness though, these photos illustrate the amazing differences in Saturn’s…
Finding Relief
On September 29, 2009 the MESSENGER spacecraft, soaring 10,000 miles above the northern hemisphere of Mercury, captured this image of the rugged terrain of our solar system’s smallest planet. Sharp hills, undulating ridges and craters of all sizes gouge the surface of Mercury, not only the smallest planet but also the densest and least explored,…
Seeking Shelter
The exploration rover Opportunity has identified what seems to be another ferrous extraplanetary visitor resting on the sands of Meridiani Plains. The 19-inch-long meteorite, shown here, has been dubbed “Shelter Island” by the MER team. Opportunity’s tire tracks are visible in the upper left. Opportunity spent six weeks in September and October investigating “Block Island”,…
Can’t Catch Me!
Windswept Martian dunes create a somewhat humanoid, running gingerbread-man figure in this image from the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The dunes reside within a crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars. This week, the University of Arizona released thousands of new images from their HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) observations, taken…
Ring King
The bright band in this image is a cross-section of a massive new ring discovered around Saturn, a cold, diffuse and incredibly thick band of material orbiting the planet 3.7 million miles out…..much farther out than any of the other rings and farther away even than most of Saturn’s moons. The ring is so…
Eagle’s Landing Site
This is what the Apollo 11 landing site looks like today from lunar orbit via NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Visible here is the remaining descent stage of the lander, a couple of left-behind scientific experiments and the tripod of a television camera as well as a dark trail of footprints to “Little West” crater left by…
First Rock From The Sun
While approaching the planet for the third flyby of its mission, the MESSENGER spacecraft took this photo of Mercury, crescent-lit by the sun and showing terrain that has never been imaged before. The region along the planet’s limb, the brightest area seen here, had yet to be mapped by the spacecraft’s cameras. It contains many…
Lights in the Dark 