It’s happened! At 7:49 a.m. EDT (11:49 UTC) this morning, July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft performed its close pass of Pluto and, fourteen minutes later, its moon Charon. While we won’t receive a signal from New Horizons until about 9 p.m. tonight (and image data from the flyby won’t arrive until July 15th)…
Tag: solar system
Pluto: Prelude to a Flyby
This is Pluto, imaged by New Horizons’ LORRI camera on July 12. It’s (once again) the best view yet, captured from a distance of 2.5 million km / 1.5 million miles. Check out all that geology – craters, depressions, chaos terrain of some sort… at no time in human history has anyone ever seen this world in…
This is Where MESSENGER Impacted Mercury
On April 30, 2015, after more than ten years in space – four of those in orbit – MESSENGER‘s mission and operational life came to its conclusive (and expected) end when it impacted the surface of Mercury. While the spacecraft’s approximate impact location was predicted by mission engineers (it was out of sight of Earth at the time)…
Here’s Pluto Like You’ve Never Seen It Before!
…no, really. There hasn’t been an image this detailed of Pluto and its moon Charon in pretty much EVER. (Which makes total sense since New Horizons is the FIRST spacecraft to visit it and it has less than a week and .05 AU to go until its closest pass!) So actually everything you’ll see of…
How Did Pluto Get Its Spots?
As New Horizons continues to close the gap between itself and Pluto more details are being revealed in images of the planet and its (comparatively) giant moon. Some of the latest images are showing some particularly intriguing features just below Pluto’s equator: a row of somewhat evenly-spaced dark spots, each about 300 miles (480 km) wide….
Bright Spots Galore and a Mystery Mountain: Ceres Gets Curiouser and Curiouser
The more NASA’s Dawn spacecraft observes of the dwarf planet Ceres the weirder it seems to get. Closer investigations of the “bright spots” first seen in Hubble images in 2003 and then in Dawn images upon approach during the first few months of 2015 show an ever-increasing cluster of smaller bright areas (eight at last count) and…
Do You See Bright Spots on Ceres? Icy Bright Spots on Ceres.
Ok that was a bad pun for a headline but this IS the best image yet from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft of the curious bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres, which have been puzzled over by scientists since they were first spotted in Hubble observations in Dec. 2003. And even with this incredible new view…
Cassini To Make Its Last Pass Of Hyperion
This coming Sunday, May 31, the Cassini spacecraft will perform its last close pass of Hyperion, Saturn’s curiously spongelike moon. At approximately 9:36 a.m. EDT (13:36 UTC) it will zip past Hyperion at a distance of about 21,000 miles (34,000 km) – which may sound like a lot but but it’s even closer (by 17,500 miles/28,160 km) than it was when the image…
Ceres’ Strange Bright Spots are Almost Certainly Reflective Material
Ever since it was first spotted by Hubble in 2003, the nature of the curious bright spot on Ceres has been an intriguing mystery for scientists. And even as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft approached the dwarf planet earlier this year the bright spot continued to mystify, gradually resolving into first two and then multiple, separate spots as Dawn…
Goodbye, MESSENGER. You May Be Gone But You Won’t Be Forgotten!
At 3:34 p.m. EDT (19:34 UTC) today, April 30, 2015, after more than ten years in space – and four of them in orbit – the MESSENGER spacecraft’s operational life came to a conclusive end when it impacted the surface of Mercury, as planned. After revealing the surface of the innermost planet like no mission ever…
Icy Tendrils in Saturn’s E Ring Traced Back to Enceladus
As the ice-encrusted moon Enceladus makes it way along its orbit around Saturn it gets repeatedly squeezed by the giant planet’s gravity, like a frozen stress ball with water-filled insides. This constant squeezing and relaxing generates friction heat in the moon’s crust, which could be responsible for keeping some of its internal water liquid and spraying…
New Horizons Has Caught Its First Color Pic of Pluto
In a historic first – just one of many that will be made over the next several months, to be sure! – the New Horizons spacecraft captured its first color image of Pluto and its partner/satellite Charon on April 9 from a distance of 71 million miles – about equivalent to that between Venus and…
Lights in the Dark 