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Archive

Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.


  • Sep. 21, 2009 | 21:04 PDT | Sep. 22 04:04 UTC
    More Saturn equinox image goodies
    More goodies are now posted in this news story, including a neato video with data from the CIRS instrument showing how the temperatures on Cassini's rings have changed as the sun set on the southern face of the rings. Cool stuff.... More»
  • Sep. 21, 2009 | 15:11 PDT | 22:11 UTC
    Saturn equinox image goodies
    Well I'd hoped to get a full story on these amazing images posted before I had to dive into afternoon kid-related duties, but I just ran out of time. So here's a preview. Much more to come later!Click to enlarge >Saturn at equinoxJust a day after... More»
  • Sep. 21, 2009 | 10:00 PDT | 17:00 UTC
    No more rumors: It's now fact that Phobos-Grunt will be delayed to 2011
    Today, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, officially announced a delay from 2009 (next month!) to 2011 of the launch of their Phobos sample return mission, Phobos-Grunt. This is a move that has long been anticipated, but until today the official... More»
  • Sep. 21, 2009 | 09:54 PDT | 16:54 UTC
    Venus looks more boring than you think it does
    The MESSENGER team posts one captioned image per week from their previous encounters. These have mostly been of Mercury but once in a while they toss in an image from one of their two Venus encounters, which happened on October 24, 2006 and June 5,... More»
  • Sep. 20, 2009 | 20:50 PDT | Sep. 21 03:50 UTC
    A piece of an asteroid returns to the telescope that discovered it
    The discovery of asteroid 2008 TC3 just before it crashed to Earth was one of the most amazing stories of last year, even before its remains were discovered strewn across the Nubian desert a few months later, turning it into the first asteroid ever... More»
  • Sep. 18, 2009 | 13:58 PDT | 20:58 UTC
    Two weeks of Tweets
    Forgot to post this last week, so it's two weeks' worth. If you'd like to see these in real time, Follow me at Twitter. A word on some conventions: "RT" means "Retweet" -- I'm repeating something that somebody else said. Anything preceded by an "@"... More»
  • Sep. 18, 2009 | 12:46 PDT | 19:46 UTC
    Some more Friday fun: How many planets?
    This video is from the new kids' CD and DVD by They Might Be Giants, Here Comes Science. This and its predecessors Here Come the 123s and Here Come the ABCs are on heavy rotation in my household. "Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, and a bunch of other stuff"... More»
  • Sep. 17, 2009 | 14:53 PDT | 21:53 UTC
    Just for fun: the spacecraft bulletin board at JPL
    I had lunch with a friend from grad school at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory today. When you walk "on lab" (as they say at JPL), this bulletin board greets you at the far end of the open quad at the JPL entrance. It's a wonderfully old-school way... More»
  • Sep. 17, 2009 | 11:09 PDT | 18:09 UTC
    Some first results from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (or, I love LOLA)
    As of Tuesday (September 15), Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (or LRO as I suppose I'm going to be forced to call it -- I really really wish they'd run a naming contest and given this bird a more graceful, one-word name) is now in its low, circular,... More»
  • Sep. 16, 2009 | 15:13 PDT | 22:13 UTC
    How does Hubble compare?
    Apologies in advance for the number of acronyms in this post. There's no way to get around them. Last week when the new, post-servicing-mission-4 capabilities of Hubble were unveiled, I kept asking myself: How do Hubble's new capabilities compare... More»