No it’s not Pan’s labyrinth, it’s a HiRISE image of a portion of Mars’ south polar ice cap showing frozen mesas made of layers of carbon dioxide ice. During the winter months on Mars – which is considerably colder than Earth – carbon dioxide is deposited as frost in the upper latitudes and evaporates…
Tag: solar system
From the LITD Archives: Sheer Elegance
Originally posted on March 13, 2009, here’s a quick reprint in honor of Cassini’s return to business! Viewed from the unlit side, the delicate transparency of Saturn’s innermost “C” Ring becomes apparent in this photo. Saturn’s upper atmospheric haze can be seen through the dark material of the rings. This photo shows a natural color view. Image…
Waiting for Cassini
Color portrait of Saturn from Cassini It’s no secret to anyone who’s been following my posts these last couple of years…images from the Cassini mission are my personal favorites and make up more than half of all my posts. So you can imagine my dismay when Cassini went into a “safe” mode over the past…
Saturn’s “Storm Alley”
Dark swirling vortices march along Saturn’s “storm alley” in this section of an image taken by Cassini on May 19, 2008. (It was recently uploaded as a featured image on JPL’s Flickr page.) Storms on Saturn are huge and powerful, with winds blowing many hundreds of miles per hour and often featuring lightning ten thousand…
Sweet Sixteen: Jupiter in Motion
This video, made up of 16 images assembled from Voyager 1 data by astro-artist Björn Jónsson and animated by Ian Regan, shows a time period spanning 16 Jupiter days (about 7 days Earth-time) wherein we can briefly observe the dynamics of the different cloud belts and spinning storms in the gas giant’s swirling atmosphere. Especially prominent is the…
Mercury’s Ancient Scar
One of the largest craters discovered in our solar system, Mercury’s Caloris basin measures in at over 963 miles (1550 km) wide…easily big enough to contain the state of Texas or all of the Great Lakes! This mosaic image shows the huge crater in its entirety – it’s the light-toned region that dominates the central part…
From the LITD Archives: Wave Forms
(Originally posted on June 27, 2009) Cast shadows reveal some interesting structure in the waves sent up by little Daphnis in this image, taken by the Cassini spacecraft on June 26, 2009. Daphnis orbits Saturn within the 26-mile-wide Keeler gap in the A ring. Its gravity disrupts the edges of the gap, carving scalloped edges in…
Just Passing By
Holy lunar photobomb, Batman! In another brief occultation event the Moon snuck in front of SDO’s cameras on Saturday, November 6, this time passing across the orbiting observatory’s view of the Sun’s southern pole and southeastern limb in a diagonal motion. This happened previously on October 7… seems like the Moon doesn’t much like being…
Visiting a Comet
They’re calling it a “peanut with jets”…Comet Hartley 2, discovered 26 years ago by astronomer Malcolm Hartley, received a brief but fascinating visit today by NASA’s EPOXI spacecraft at 10:01 am EDT. Images were received on Earth half an hour later, and I assembled these initial 5 close-ups into the rough animation above. (Click to…
Color Cast
Another awesome upload by Gordan Ugarkovic, here’s a color-composite image from Cassini data taken in December 2009 showing a jetting Enceladus lit by “Saturnshine” – reflected diffused sunlight from an off-frame Saturn – and given a Saturn-y coloration at the same time! Icy Enceladus is typically a bright white color, with some grey and…
Multi Moons
I can’t even begin to say how many moons Cassini captured in this raw image, taken yesterday October 6! I see Epimetheus and Janus and Pan and Daphnis (I think) and…Atlas?….and…and……..is that Tethys at the bottom? I’m not sure, but what I do know is that this is a whole lot of moons…
Small Worlds, Big Surprises
Far from being just a jagged hunk of rock tumbling through space, the asteroid Lutetia – visited by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft this past July – has been found to be coated with a 2000-foot-thick layer of dust and rocks, visibly softening the edges of craters and ridges on its surface. This layer…
Lights in the Dark 