News from NASA’s InSight Mission on July 22, 2021 (source) Before NASA’s InSight spacecraft touched down on Mars in 2018, the rovers and orbiters studying the Red Planet concentrated on its surface. The stationary lander’s seismometer has changed that, revealing details about the planet’s deep interior for the first time. Three papers based on the…
Tag: planet
Hubble’s Newest View of Jupiter Shows New Storms Brewing
News from NASA: This latest image of Jupiter, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on August 25, 2020, was captured when the planet was 406 million miles from Earth. Hubble’s sharp view is giving researchers an updated weather report on the monster planet’s turbulent atmosphere, including a remarkable new storm brewing, and a cousin of…
What’s the Weather on Jupiter? Cloudy with a Chance of Mushballs
Recent findings from NASA’s Juno mission, in orbit around Jupiter since July 4, 2016, may have solved an ongoing mystery about the composition of the giant planet’s upper atmosphere; namely, the case of the missing ammonia. (Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen and helium but also contains trace amounts of ammonia, methane, and water vapor.) North…
Mariner 10’s View of Venus from 1974, Revisited and Remastered
(News from NASA) As it sped away from Venus, NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft captured this seemingly peaceful view of a planet the size of Earth, wrapped in a dense, global cloud layer. But, contrary to its serene appearance, the clouded globe of Venus is a world of intense heat, crushing atmospheric pressure and clouds of…
Happy Opposition Day!
It’s Opposition Day! No, that’s not a political stance but rather a geometric one, relating to the positions of Earth, the Sun, and Mars in the Solar System. Today our neighboring planet Mars will be directly opposite the Sun relative to Earth, which will make it the second-brightest “star” in the night sky after Venus….
ESA Finds Liquid Water on Mars
Water has been found on Mars! (Yes, again.) In what’s turned into the biggest space news of the day, today ESA (and that’s pronounced “eesa”, you don’t need to spell it out) announced that the Italian-run radar experiment aboard its Mars Express orbiter has provided the first good evidence of liquid water present beneath the…
A Twisted Towel of Bright Clouds on Jupiter
This dramatic image, a color-composite I made from raw data captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, shows a bright band of high-altitude clouds on Jupiter’s northern hemisphere on July 16, 2018. Because of the abstract nature of Jupiter’s atmosphere in general (and a fun little phenomenon called pareidolia) one could find many different shapes in this…
Three Years Ago Today New Horizons Passed Pluto
Holy Hadean history Batman, where does the time go? Today marks the third anniversary of New Horizons‘ flyby of Pluto and Charon, the first, last, and as yet only mission ever to the distant dwarf planet (aka the reigning King of the Kuiper Belt.) All of the close-up detailed images of Pluto and Charon we…
Well, It’s Official: Uranus Smells Like Farts
Scientists have just confirmed what every third-grader has known for nearly 170 years* as irrefutable fact: Uranus smells like stinky farts. Let the giggling commence.
Juno and JEDI Deliver New Discoveries About Jupiter
Saturn has its rings, Mars has its rusty landscape, Earth has its whales, water, and wi-fi…and Jupiter has its Great Red Spot. The giant gas planet’s enormous orange storm—once over twice the diameter of Earth but today “only” about 1.3 times as wide—is one of the most distinctive planetary features in our Solar System. It’s…
Have No Fear, Phobos is Here!
On May 12, 2016, the Hubble Space Telescope captured a series of images of Mars and in them the planet’s moon Phobos can be seen appearing from behind the western limb. This was just 10 days before opposition which, in 2016, was the closest Mars had been to Earth since 2005, lending particularly good opportunity…
Today Juno Will Get Our Best Look Yet at Jupiter’s Great Red Spot
Today, July 10 (July 11 UTC) NASA’s Juno spacecraft will make its first targeted flyover of Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot since its arrival in orbit on July 4, 2016, getting our best look yet at the giant anticyclonic storm that’s been churning on the giant planet since at least 1830 (and possibly even since…
Lights in the Dark 