Rhea and Titan, Saturn’s two largest moons, align in Cassini’s lens in this image taken on November 19, 2009. I level-adjusted and rotated the original raw image file…”north” would be to the right in this view. Rhea is 949 miles wide, cold, icy and airless. Titan, 3,200 miles wide, is also frigidly cold but is…
Tag: solar system
Solar Power
This video taken by the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft, a joint project by NASA and the European Space Agency, shows a large bright active region on the Sun rotating into view on November 13. These areas, many times larger than Earth, expel large amounts of solar material and energy in the form of…
Written in Stone
This image from the HiRISE high-resolution camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows multiple layers of exposed sedimentary rock on Mars in a region known as Arabia Terra. Referred to as “cyclic bedding” by geologists, this pattern of layering is caused by repeated fluctuations in the amount of sediment available to create new rock…
Enceladus and Rhea
In another stately pas de deux as seen from the point of view of the Cassini spacecraft, moons Rhea and Enceladus slip past each other in their eternal travels around Saturn. This animation is made up of 20 raw images from Cassini, taken on November 15, level-adjusted and rotated 90º clockwise. Enceladus is about to…
An Example of Extremes
Giant, haze-covered Titan sits in front of craggy, potato-shaped Hyperion in this image from Cassini, taken on November 13. These two vastly different moons occupy neighboring orbits and thus affect each other’s travels around Saturn…although Titan obviously takes the lead in this dance. 168-mile-wide Hyperion is forced to speed up and slow down as it…
Good Morning Antarctica
Last night the Rosetta spacecraft took this stunning image of Earth, showing the rosy crescent of the southern pole lit by the summer sun. (It’s nearing the height of summer in Antarctica, when the sun never fully sets for several months.) Click for a larger view. Absolutely beautiful. I rotated the image so that south…
Saturn’s Darker Side
Released November 9, 2009, this image from Cassini shows the northern night side of Saturn sending a deep shadow across its rings while the 700-mile-wide Dione looks on. The shepherd moon Pandora can be seen here as well, orbiting just outside the thin F ring, at center. The Cassini spacecraft was over 800,000 miles from…
Composition in White
949-mile-wide Rhea floats in front of the rings and the brightly-lit face of Saturn in this image from Cassini, taken on November 8. The face of Saturn, overexposed here in order to see detail in the rings and Rhea, appears as bright white, making a dramatic studio backdrop. The planet’s uppermost atmospheric haze is also…
Now that’s a big shadow!
This was a suprising find amongst the raw images from Cassini this evening….a photo of Saturn, similar to the one I posted previously, but with a massive shadow cast upon its southern hemisphere. I presume it’s from Titan, somewhere out of frame, based upon its size and hazy edges (indicative of the big moon’s thick…
Along the Edge
Moons Rhea and Enceladus orbit along the ringplane in this view from Cassini, taken November 6, 2009. That is, I think it’s Rhea and Enceladus in this image. It’s hard to tell for sure from this distance. (Cassini was over 1.2 million miles from Saturn when this was shot.) If anyone knows for sure, I’m…
Electric Blue
Yesterday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day was this fantastic image by the talented Alan Friedman, showing the sphere of our Sun taken in a special wavelength of light emitted by hydrogen gas and then inverted to look blue. Incredible details of the Sun’s surface – the chromosphere – become visible, most notably the texture…
Now With 6% More Mercury!
With the third and last flyby of Mercury by the MESSENGER spacecraft, NASA scientists have now imaged nearly 98 percent of the surface of the first planet from our sun. The photo above shows a color-calibrated view of a crescent Mercury, acquired on September 29. This will be the last close-up color image of Mercury…
Lights in the Dark 