See the image above? It’s the surface of a comet. Pretty cool. See the dark spot along the bottom? It’s the shadow of the spacecraft that took the image of the comet. WAY cool!
Tag: science
Oh What a Relief! Cool 3D Views of the Moon via LROC
Do you have any of those paper 3D viewers around? You know, with the red and blue lenses? If so, pop ’em on and check out the image above from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) showing the crater “Hell Q,” located on the Moon’s southern near side near the brightly-rayed Tycho. You might think…
Our Five-Trillion-Mile Close Call: the Star(s) That Skimmed the Solar System
It’s like something out of a Hollywood film or a science fiction novel: a dark star sneaks up on Earth from just outside the Solar System, discovered too late to do anything about it (and really, what could we do?) and plows through the cloud of comets that surrounds the Sun like a haze of icy gnats, sending them flying…
Watch This Stunning Seamless Video of Earth From Orbit
Recently featured on Universe Today, this video of Earth from space assembled by video artist Phil Selmes uses actual photos captured from the Space Station, with some fancy editing to create seamless transitions between views. It’s another beautiful presentation of the fragile oasis we call home. “I don’t see politics, races, borders, countries, religions or differences,” Selmes said in…
Latest Images of Ceres Show Its Bright Spot Is Actually Twins!
Here’s your weekly Ceres update! The dwarf planet’s features are coming into better and better focus for the approaching Dawn spacecraft, which will be captured by Ceres’ gravity on March 6. The image above is yet another “best-ever” of Ceres (as will be each one we see now), captured on Feb. 19, 2015, from a distance of…
Long Before it Captured a Comet, Rosetta Caught These Views of Mars
These days the world is looking in awe at the incredible images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft. But it took Rosetta over ten years to arrive at the comet, during which time it got some great views of other worlds in our Solar System as well: Earth (a couple of times), the asteroids Lutetia and…
Rosetta Gets Up Close and Personal With Comet 67P
On Saturday, Feb. 14, 2015, the Rosetta spacecraft performed a bit of a barnstorming act, swooping low over the surface of comet 67P/C-G in the first dedicated close pass of its mission. It came within a scant 6 km (3.7 miles) of the comet’s surface at 12:41 GMT. The image above is a mosaic of four individual…
Only the Penitentes Shall Pass: Snow and Stars Near ESO’s ALMA
I just had to share this beautiful image by ESO photo ambassador Babak Tafreshi; it shows a star-filled night sky above the Chajnantor Plateau on the border of Chile and Bolivia, the site of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory. The site, chosen for its remote location and incredibly clear, dry sky, is one of the best…
Ice May Be Buried Beneath These Ancient Martian Hills
Scientists have been hunting for evidence of water on Mars ever since we started looking at the Red Planet through telescopes. But Mars does have water, and lots of it; solid water in the form of ice locked up in its polar caps and buried under its surface. And, if observations made by ESA’s Mars Express…
Hinode Watches the Sun Weave Its Magnetic Web
Many of the features seen on the Sun might look like tongues of flame or fiery eruptions, but there’s no fire or lava on the Sun – its energetic outbursts are driven by powerful magnetic fields that rise up from its internal regions and twist, loop, and coil far out into space. In addition to these…
Hello, Ceres! Dwarf Planet’s Features Come Into Focus
Won’t you look at that! Here’s a view of Ceres captured by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 km). No longer just a grey sphere with some vague bright spots, actual features can now be resolved – craters, mountains, and scarps that quite literally no one has ever…
Despeckled Radar Images Give a Clearer View of Titan’s Shores
At 1,600 miles (2,576 km) across Titan is by far Saturn’s largest moon – in fact it’s the second-largest satellite in the solar system. It’s also the only world besides Earth where liquids have been found in large amounts on the surface, in the form of lakes and streams of frigid methane and ethane. This makes Titan…
Lights in the Dark 