There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the existence of a “new” planet in our solar system, a gas giant that has eluded discovery by astronomers thus far because of its purported incredibly distant orbit – over 350 times farther from the Sun than Pluto, or a whopping 15,000 times farther from the Sun…
Tag: science
First Image of Tempel 1
The first image taken by Stardust-NExT as it approached Tempel 1, the comet’s nucleus in clear view but still rather far away. Luckily the comet was centered in the field of view for all the images, but it will take some time to get to the closer-pass images in the download stack. (The 5 closest-pass…
From the LITD Archives: Voyager’s Valentine
On February 14, 1990, after nearly 13 years of traveling the outer solar system the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed the orbit of Pluto and turned its camera around to take a series of photos of the planets. The image above shows those photos, isolated from the original series and labeled left to right, top to…
A Solar Bullet
Can’t see the video below? Click here. Around 12:38 pm EST today, an energetic sunspot region on the Sun released a flare in our direction. The video above, a crop from an SDO AIA 171 mpeg, shows the shifting coronal loops surrounding sunspot 1158 as it rotates into view over the past day or so….
Happy Birthday to LITD!
Today is Lights in the Dark’s second birthday! I published my first post two years ago today, in an attempt to carry on what Bill Dunford had started with his similarly-themed blog Riding With Robots. When Bill had to step away from his blogging for a while, I asked if he’d be cool with me…
Tempel of Love
This Valentine’s Day – that’s Monday, guys! – NASA’s Stardust spacecraft will have an out-of-this-world date with a heavenly body: the comet Tempel 1, seen above in an image mosaic taken by the Deep Impact spacecraft nearly six years ago. On July 4, 2005, Deep Impact made a rendezvous with Tempel 1, passing as…
Looking Into a Lunar Cave
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recently got a glimpse into a previously-imaged pit in a region called Marius Hills. An oblique view combined with angled sunlight gave a peek into what seems to be a lunar cave, or at least some sort of overhang at the bottom of the pit! Previous images were completely dark, illuminating…
Dione’s Wispy Cliffs
First spotted by the Voyager spacecraft thirty years ago, it wasn’t until Cassini that the linear features criscrossing Saturn’s moon Dione known as “wispy lines” were confirmed to be the icy faces of high cliff walls rising hundreds of feet from the moon’s frozen surface. Possibly caused by tectonic activity Dione’s cliff walls shine brightly…
The Sun in STEREO
NASA’s STEREO mission – twin spacecraft orbiting the Sun, one ahead of Earth and the other behind – has reached a milestone in its mission today: both spacecraft are now in position to be able to view the entire Sun at the same time, giving scientists the ability to monitor solar activity on both sides!…
Getting WISE to asteroids
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer – WISE – has recently finished a survey of small bodies in our solar system. The survey mission, called NEOWISE (for Near Earth Objects), used WISE’s infrared-imaging capabilities to identify 20 new comets and more than 33,000 main-belt asteroids. WISE also spotted 134 near-Earth objects – asteroids or comets that…
Mimas and the Rings
Mimas hovers in front of Saturn’s rings in a color image composed from raw Cassini data taken on January 31, 2011. I used data taken with Cassini’s green, infrared and ultraviolet spectral filters to compose this colorized version. Known as the “Death Star” moon, 250-mile (400 km) -wide Mimas’ northern hemisphere is dominated by the 80-mile…
Textured Trojan
First of all, get your mind out of the gutter. 😉 21-mile (35 km) -wide Helene is a “Trojan” moon of the much larger Dione, so called because it orbits Saturn within the path of Dione, 60º ahead of it. (Its little sister Trojan, 3-mile-wide Polydeuces, trails Dione at the rear 60º mark.) The Homeric…
Lights in the Dark 