Something like this: This video was made from 72 radar observations made on the night of Feb. 15/16, 2013, by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, CA. The target object, a ~40-meter wide asteroid named 2012 DA14, passed within 17,200 miles (27,680 km) of Earth — coming several thousand…
Tag: space
This Asteroid Will Pass Closely on Friday, But No Chance of Impact
All eyes have been on the incoming near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 over the past few weeks, with many speculations of if — and what if — the 50-meter-wide space rock poses any danger to us here on Earth. True, it will come well within the orbit of the Moon, even passing by closer than geosynchronous…
Voyager’s Grand Tour: a Webcomic
Do you like space exploration? Do you like comics? Then this is for you. “Voyager” is a webcomic by LA-based artist Jed McGowan about the Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched from Kennedy Space Center on September 5, 1977. Over the next three years it flew by Jupiter and Saturn, taking unprecedented photos of the giant planets…
That’s No Space Station, It’s a MOON!
First Alderaan, then Prometheus?? Here we go again! Saturn’s moon Mimas looks uncannily like the Death Star, and this animation by Diamond Sky Productions makes the resemblance even more apparent. Now witness the power of this fully-armed battle station! (No shepherd moons were harmed in the making of this video.) Video © Diamond Sky Productions,…
Mercury’s Cratered Crescent (in Color!)
Every now and then a new gem of a color-composite appears in the Flickr photostream of Gordan Ugarkovic, and this one is the latest to materialize. This is a view of Mercury as seen by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft during a flyby in October 2008. The image is a composite of twenty separate frames acquired with MESSENGER’s…
Floes of Frozen Methane May Be Floating on Titan’s Lakes
Although surface temperatures on Titan are cold enough that methane can exist as a liquid, filling lakes and flowing in streams, it may sometimes get so cold that even the liquid methane and ethane freezes, forming floes and icebergs of frozen hydrocarbons. This Titanic revelation was announced today during the 221st American Astronomical Society meeting…
Cassini’s Christmas Gift: a Peek at Prometheus
Captured on Christmas Day, this is a raw image from Cassini showing Saturn’s F ring buckling inwards at two places due to the gravitational tug of its inner shepherd moon, Prometheus, seen at center. As the irregularly-shaped moon approaches the ring material in its looping orbit around Saturn it draws material from the ring in…
A Colorful Christmas Moon
Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone! Here’s your present from Lights in the Dark: a color-composite of Saturn’s moon Dione, lovingly made from raw images captured by the Cassini spacecraft on December 23. 700 miles (1120 km) wide, Dione (pronounced DEE-oh-nee) is covered pole-to-pole in craters and is crisscrossed by deep chasms and long, bright…
Our Electric Earth at Night: the “Black Marble”
In daylight our big blue marble is all land, oceans and clouds. But the night is electric. This image of North and South America at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012. The new data was mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic…
Hidden Ice Found on Mercury!
Who says Mercury’s too hot to be really cool? Even three times closer to the Sun than we are, lacking atmosphere and with scorching daytime temperatures of 425 ºC (800 ºF), Mercury still has places more than cold enough to hide ice. This is the most recent announcement from the MESSENGER mission team: (very nearly) confirmed…
The Coolest Calendar You’ll See All Year
Do you need a new calendar? Of course you do, the year’s almost over. (And if you’d forgotten, well.. you’re welcome.) Of course if you’re reading this post you’re most likely a fan of space exploration, and so you’ll need a calendar that’s going to entertain your fascination about space for a whole year. This…
A Spooky Space Ghost for Halloween!
Looking like something out of a Tim Burton movie, the eerie shapes seen above are part of a cloud of gas and dust located 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus. First identified in 1966, the human-like figures with “arms” raised give the nebula its spooky nickname: the “Ghost Nebula”.
Lights in the Dark 