Enceladus, Saturn’s 318-mile-wide moon that’s become famous for its ice-spraying southern jets, is on astronomers’ short list of places in our own solar system where extraterrestrial life could be hiding — and on March 27, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was in just the right place to try and sniff it out. Why does Cassini team director…
Tag: science
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.
Star Lab Makes Suborbital Affordable
Star Lab, the next-generation vehicle for suborbital experiments developed by the Florida-based 4Frontiers Corporation, is well on its way toward its first successful flight — and it’s looking for payloads. I had a chance to interview Mark Homnick, CEO of 4Frontiers, at his office in New Port Richey, Florida. He gave me the run-down on…
Is This Comet SWAN’s Swan Song?
A newly-discovered comet is on its way into the Sun… can you spot it in the animation above? No? Read on…
Rugged Rhea
Here’s a color-composite image of Rhea, made from raw images acquired by Cassini during a flyby on March 10, 2012. The color is derived from images taken in infrared, green and ultraviolet light.
The Devil’s Shadow
The 800-meter-tall plume of a dust devil casts a long shadow on the surface of Mars in this image from the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Caused by warm air near the ground rapidly rising in spinning columns, dust devils are a common sight on Mars during the northern spring season. Read more…
How Many Stars Can Astronauts See?
Short answer: a lot. Long answer: a real lot… if you include the stars inside the Andromeda galaxy, which is also very visible from space as this recent time-lapse from the ISS shows!
NASA Satellite Spots Creepy Face on the Moon
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) acquired an image of the interior of Schiller crater on the Moon and this grumpy-looking boulder was found within by a Moon Zoo member. Just what is it, and what could have created it? Read more here!
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.
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…
Sun, Moon and Spots
The Moon snuck in front of the Sun this morning from the perspective of NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (Little SDO), sliding past the sunspots of active region 1422. For a sense of scale, those sunspots are easily several times larger than Earth! Read the rest of the story here. And check out a video of the…
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.)
Lights in the Dark 