It’s been over two months since the MESSENGER spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Mercury, back on March 18, and it’s been enthusiastically returning image after image of our solar system’s innermost planet at a unprecedented rate. Which, of course, is just fine with me! The image above shows Mercury’s southern hemisphere and the bright rays…
Tag: science
Watching Over Spirit
As a poignant reminder that Spirit is now officially at rest in its permanent position next to Home Plate, the HiRISE team released this image today showing the sun glinting brightly off the rover’s solar panels, visible to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter high above. Even though it may have fallen silent, Spirit will always be…
A Fistful of Moons
This image from Cassini shows no less than five of Saturn’s moons in the same frame: Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) is largest in the foreground; Dione (1,123 kilometers, or 698 miles across) can be seen just above the rings below Rhea near the center; Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) is just barely…
Three Weeks on Jupiter
Can’t see the video below? Click here. Check out this fascinating new-and-improved video of Jupiter’s swirling cloud belts in action, made up of Voyager 1 image data acquired from January 6 through January 29, 1979. Digital artist Björn Jónsson assembled this high-definition animation from 58 images skillfully color-composited and tweened together to create a smooth video….
A First Look at an Asteroid
Ever wonder what an asteroid would look like from three-quarters of a million miles away? Well, here ya go. 🙂 This image, a processed version of the original, shows the true size of the 330-mile-wide asteroid Vesta as seen by the approaching Dawn spacecraft on May 3, 2011. The original image contained a lot of…
Mars’ Underground Atmosphere
Scientists have spotted an underground reservoir near Mars’ south pole the size of Lake Superior… except that this lake is filled with frozen carbon dioxide – a.k.a. “dry ice”! A recent report by scientists at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO reveals variations in Mars’ axial tilt can change how much carbon dioxide gets…
Cool Cassini Capture: Pandora
Cassini took this raw image of the 50-mile (81-km) -wide moon Pandora on May 7, 2011. The oval-shaped shepherd moon orbits Saturn just outside the F ring. Saturn’s long shadow is cast over the central portion of the rings in this image. Credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute
Slicing Into Mars’ Past
Deep gashes – called grabens – slice across the surface in the Nili Fossae region of Mars, seen above in an image from the Mars Express orbiter taken in February 2008. A German word meaning “ditch”, a graben is a downthrust strip of land bordered by scarps on either side. They are typically caused by…
iseefaces…on the Moon!
This mound – with craters positioned facelike on its top, including a central peak crater – is located along the edge of the Moon’s Eddington crater, an ancient lava-filled basin on the central western limb. Imaged by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in January, this 1.5km-wide mound may be the remnants of a volcano. Or it…
Ride Along With Rhea
Assembled from 29 raw images taken by the Cassini orbiter on Monday, April 25, this animation brings us along an orbital ride with Rhea as it crosses Saturn’s nighttime face, the planet’s shadow cast across the ringplane. Sister moons Dione and Tethys travel the opposite lane in the background, eventually appearing to sink into Saturn’s…
Prime PDS Picks
Every six to nine months or so the Cassini Imaging Center dumps orbiter image data into NASA’s Planetary Data System, or PDS. This data is accessible to anyone with an internet connection, but it can be a little awkward to find exactly what you’re looking for (unless you’re familiar with the technical nomenclature of the…
High Above Hawaii
For a real weekend treat, check out this beautiful time-lapse video taken by a camera mounted on a catwalk on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on Mauna Kea in – you guessed it – Hawaii. 🙂 (If you don’t see a video above, click here to watch on YouTube.) Wow…absolutely beautiful! Especially considering no fancy editing…
Lights in the Dark 