|
|
The Planetary Society Weblog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Dec. 5, 2007 | 14:08 PST | 22:08 UTC
Some Genesis results
Genesis was a space mission that collected samples of the solar wind and returned them to Earth. It was to enter Earth's atmosphere and, after deceleration behind a heat shield, open a parachute; then, in a stunt worthy of an action movie, a... More»
Dec. 4, 2007 | 14:43 PST | 22:43 UTC
Epimetheus
Cassini nabbed a nice set of views of Epimetheus yesterday. Epimetheus is one of Saturn's smaller moons, orbiting between the main ring system and the larger round moons. Epimetheus is nearly co-orbital with Janus, which has four times Epimetheus'... More»
Dec. 3, 2007 | 14:18 PST | 22:18 UTC
No, the Chang'e image isn't fake! -- but there's no new feature in it, either
An update to this story is posted here.
Apparently there is a rumor circulating on the Internet that the Chang'e 1 image released last week was faked, that it looks too similar to a "2005 NASA photo;" the rumor was written up in a Reuters story... More»
Nov. 30, 2007 | 12:03 PST | 20:03 UTC
Flipping Earth
Amazingly, only one reader has emailed me to point out a problem with this image, released by ESA on November 20. I didn't notice the problem either. Look carefully.Click to enlarge >Rosetta Looks Back at Earth After its closest approach to Earth,... More»
Nov. 29, 2007 | 13:29 PST | 21:29 UTC
How to buy a telescope
Every year I get several queries from readers on how to get started with astronomy and questions on what kind of telescope to buy. As I have never owned a telescope or even binoculars and have, I am sad to say, looked through the eyepiece of one... More»
Nov. 28, 2007 | 14:34 PST | 22:34 UTC
New Kaguya images
Just before the Thanksgiving holiday week, JAXA issued a press release with images from another of Kaguya's many cameras, the Terrain Camera. It's a nice image at really high resolution; the enlarged version is 20 meters per pixel. (The camera is... More»
Nov. 28, 2007 | 10:13 PST | 18:13 UTC
CRISM spots Phobos and Deimos
These are cool:This view of Phobos was captured at 01:19 UTC on October 23, 2007. Phobos, like the smaller moon Deimos, is generally dark and reddish in color, but associated with the giant crater Stickney (at the upper left limb of the moon in this... More»
Nov. 27, 2007 | 15:21 PST | 23:21 UTC
The Deep Impact extended mission is going to take a little longer
In July NASA announced extended missions for the Deep Impact and Stardust spacecraft. Stardust is on its way to a 2011 rendezvous with the comet that Deep Impact blasted, Tempel 1, while Deep Impact was being sent onto a December 5, 2008 flyby of... More»
Nov. 27, 2007 | 11:04 PST | 19:04 UTC
Chang'e 1 returns its first image from the Moon
On Monday, with much pomp and circumstance (and rightfully so), Chinese premier Wen Jiabao unveiled the first image returned from the Moon by the Chang'e 1 orbiter, China's first spacecraft to depart Earth orbit. That's something only Russia, the... More»
Nov. 26, 2007 | 15:38 PST | 23:38 UTC
"Return of the Falcon," a new animation of the Hayabusa mission
JAXA has released a 30-minute video of the Hayabusa mission, "Return of the Falcon," combining computer animation with actual footage of the construction and launch as well as images from the spacecraft of Itokawa. It takes a while to download but... More»
|
|