Every now and then I get unexpectedly caught up in a project that I originally intended to be a quick just-for-fun thing and ends up taking an hour and a half of my time (usually long after I should have gone to bed.) This was one of those. Made up of 28 raw images acquired…
Tag: space
Here’s the Last Moon of 2014
Here’s the last Moon of 2014 and she’s a beauty! I love the light on the mountainous rim of Sinus Iridum along the northern terminator, the remains of a 3.7-billion-year-old lava-filled crater aka the “Bay of Rainbows.” Thanks to all of my readers and fans for following along throughout 2014, and here’s to yet another exciting…
Jupiter’s Moons Make Ghostly Auroral “Footprints”
We have all marveled at incredible photos and time-lapse videos of Earth’s auroral displays, captured by talented photographers that have braved the frigid nighttime temperatures of remote high-latitude locations as well as by those privileged few living in orbit aboard the International Space Station. But our planet isn’t the only one with curtains of light crowning its…
The First Christmas From the Moon
“We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” – Bill Anders, Apollo 8 On Christmas Eve 46 years ago, December 24, 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts entered orbit around the Moon and came upon an amazing sight: a blue Earth “rising*” beyond the…
Watch a Full Year of the Moon in Five Minutes
This is very cool: it’s a visualization of the Moon’s changing phases and libration throughout the year, made by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Visualization Studio. They’ve done these several times in the past and this is the latest one for the upcoming year 2015. For accuracy you just can’t beat it: the global terrain…
Watch This Hauntingly Beautiful Footage From Orion’s Fiery Return to Earth
On December 5, 2014, at 7:05 a.m. EST, an enormous Delta IV Heavy roared into the sky from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, sending a test version of NASA’s Orion spacecraft on a “flawless” four-and-a-half hour, two-orbit voyage which took it 3,604 miles away from Earth – farther than any spacecraft…
NASA Wants to Send Humans to Mars, But What About Venus?
NASA, SpaceX, Mars One… all (and others) are actively working on plans to send humans to the surface of Mars at some time within the next few decades. And while the first human exploration of the Red Planet will be a truly momentous and historic event in whatever fashion it ends up being – it…
It’s Time to Say Bon Voyage to Venus Express
Launched in 2005, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express successfully entered orbit around our cloud-shrouded neighboring world. Now, after more than eight and a half years of scientific observations Venus Express has run out of fuel and will soon go gentle into that good night – that is if by “going gentle” you mean death-diving…
New OSIRIS Image of 67P Shows a Color Picture of a Black and White World
Many of the images we’ve been seeing of the craggy surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as incredible as they are, are still monochrome. Now Rosetta’s OSIRIS team has released a true-color image of the comet taken with it high-res science imaging instrument… but even then it’s still pretty much grey.
Where’s Waldo – er, Philae? Rosetta Captures Bouncing Lander on Camera
On Wednesday, Nov. 12 2014, after over ten years and literally hundreds of millions of miles of travel, ESA’s Rosetta mission successfully put its Philae lander down on the surface of a tumbling comet 316 million miles from Earth. While Philae’s long-awaited landing was deemed a success, if just in that all primary mission science data was…
Surprising Structures Discovered at the Bottom of Uranus
Out in the depths of our solar system, about 1.8 billion miles away from the Sun somewhere between the planets Saturn and far-flung Neptune, orbits the oddball ice giant Uranus – a frigid, thinly-ringed world tipped almost completely on its side and shrouded in both mystery and pale blue-green clouds. Aside from the occasional bright storm clouds…
The 2015 Year in Space Calendars Are Here!
What brings you an entire sidereal year of awesome space news and pictures, each and every day? (Besides me, of course?) That’s right: The Year in Space calendar! Produced by Starry Messenger Press in conjunction with The Planetary Society, the 2015 Year in Space calendar is (like its predecessors) a gorgeous 16″ x 22″ (40.5 cm…
Lights in the Dark 