Three Devils, One Image

The HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Oribiter captured this image of Mars’ surface, showing the presence of three different dust devils in the same region. Dust devils are common during the springtime on Mars’ northern hemisphere, when increased sunlight heats the surface and causes air to rise rapidly in spinning columns. The image was…

Take a Look at Titan!

Here’s a great shot of Titan and Saturn acquired by Cassini on May 6, 2012 just after a pass by the haze-covered moon. It’s a color-composite made from images taken in Cassini’s red, green and blue color channels, and the resulting image was color adjusted a bit to appear more “Saturny”.

Super Moon’s Big Night

Did you get a chance to see last night’s “super Moon”? Weather permitting, it put on a nice show — especially as it rose above the horizon! The photo above was taken at about 9:00 p.m. central time from Dallas, TX. It was a bit hazy in the sky but the Moon had a yellow…

Fragile Earth Puts a Century of Climate Change At Your Fingertips

As a follow-up to the previous Wonders of the Universe i-app released by Harper Collins, Fragile Earth brings us back from the farthest reaches of the Universe to our own beautiful blue world, whose surface is rapidly changing due to the effects of human civilization. With Fragile Earth those changes are brought to light with…

Coolest. Sun Pic. Ever.

Alan Friedman does it again — and this time with a brand new camera! — in his latest photo of our home star, guaranteed to blow your mind. Check out the full image here. Image © Alan Friedman. All rights reserved.

The Color of Rhea

If someone were to ask you today what the most heavily-cratered world in the Solar System is, you can’t go wrong with saying “why, Rhea of course!” (I don’t know why someone would ask you that, but if anyone does you can now consider yourself well-prepared.) 🙂

Pretty as a Picture: Enceladus and Titan

Little Enceladus and enormous Titan are seen on either side of Saturn’s rings in this image, a color-composite I made from raw images acquired by Cassini on March 12, 2012. Read more here.

Orion Versus the Space Station

I captured the Space Station careening toward the Hunter on the night of March 2, 2012, just a little after 7:50 pm. A half-moon illuminated the event… who won? Well, let’s just say Orion’s still up there and the ISS faded away shortly after! (I’m sure they’ll be back for another go! They’re a plucky…

Aurora Ablaze

A very active Aurora Borealis was photographed by one of the Expedition 30 crew members aboard the International Space Station flying approximately 240 miles above Manitoba, Canada on Jan. 25, 2012. Lake Winnipeg (lower right center) and the major city Winnipeg (bottom center) are easily recognizable in the nighttime scene.

Daytime Moon, Hello Venus!

What a weekend for sky gazing! As promised in Friday’s article on Universe Today, Venus was visible during the daylight hours this Saturday, very close to the crescent Moon. If you had clear weather you too may have been able to catch a glimpse of the scene above, photographed from my location in north Texas at…

A Daily Dose of Dawn

Here’s a gorgeous view from the International Space Station, taken by the Expedition 30 crew on Feb. 4, 2012 as the station passed into orbital dawn. The greens and reds of the aurora borealis shimmer above Earth’s limb beyond the Station’s solar panels as city lights shine beneath a layer of clouds. Read the rest…

More ISS Awesomeness!

This just in: new time-lapses from the ISS, by way of the Image Science & Analysis Lab at Johnson Space Center and The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Enjoy! (Descriptions from JSC.)