All I can say is ” 🙂 “. On its way back for its third and last flyby on Nov. 13, 2009, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft captured this beautiful photo of our planet. The illuminated crescent shows the south polar region, with some of Antarctica’s sea ice reflecting brightly through the swirling clouds….
Tag: planet
Composition in White
949-mile-wide Rhea floats in front of the rings and the brightly-lit face of Saturn in this image from Cassini, taken on November 8. The face of Saturn, overexposed here in order to see detail in the rings and Rhea, appears as bright white, making a dramatic studio backdrop. The planet’s uppermost atmospheric haze is also…
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…
Full Spectrum
A beautiful natural-color calibrated image by Gordan Ugarkovic, showing the many subtle and varied hues of Saturn’s atmosphere and rings. Image: NASA/JPL/SSI/Gordan Ugarkovic.
From a Distance
The MESSENGER spacecraft took this photo of Mercury on October 10, 2009, from a distance of almost 2 million miles. Just days earlier, MESSENGER flew over the surface of the innermost planet at an altitude of only 140 miles. With no atmosphere to disperse heat, the day side of Mercury can reach nearly 800º F…
Send your message to Venus!
The AKATSUKI Message Campaign Next year, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will launch its Planet-C Venus Climate Orbiter, which will explore the atmosphere of Venus and investigate wind dynamics, cloud formation and other meteorological mechanics of Earth’s neighboring planet. And from now until December 25, you can register online to add your name and…
Methane Skies
In this raw image from Cassini, giant scallop-edged cloud patterns become visible in Saturn’s atmosphere with camera filters specially designed to detect methane. Light and dark banding of the clouds at various latitudes are also extremely distinctive through this filter. Although mostly hydrogen and helium, Saturn’s atmosphere does contain elements like methane and ammonia. 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,…
Saturn in the Spring
The Cassini Imaging Team has released this image, a stunning portrait of Saturn made from 75 separate wide-angle exposures taken during the ringed planet’s spring equinox on August 12, 2009. The specific angle of sunlight during the equinox makes the shadow of Saturn’s expansive rings appear as a pencil-thin line across the cloudtops at the…
Into the Blue
Discovered by philosophy professor Ted Stryk in the archives of Voyager 2 image data, four separate images were combined to show the shadow of Despina – lightened for better visibility – crossing over the sky blue face of Neptune. Neptune, now officially the outermost planet in our solar system, was visited by Voyager 2 in…
A Fresh Perspective
Prometheus’ shadow slices through the strands of Saturn’s F ring in this low-angle view from the Cassini orbiter. The sunlit shepherd moon is a bit overexposed in this image, in order to capture the bands of the rings. This view is looking outwards across the edge of the B ring (at lower left), the darker…
Shadow Play
A series of images from Cassini shows the 110-mile-wide Janus passing through shadows cast by Saturn’s rings. Janus shares its orbit within the ring system with sister moon Epimetheus. Both are small, rocky worlds…irregularly-shaped clusters of rubble pockmarked by ancient craters and displaying lots of scrapes and gouges, evidence of glancing blows by larger bodies.
Lights in the Dark 