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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Oct. 16, 2009 | 10:28 PDT | 17:28 UTC
Opportunity's world of dunes and rock
Opportunity's been making tracks lately, with brief stops to check out a couple of meteorites. I thought this view of its surroundings on sol 2,034 (a couple of days ago) was neat. It's a polar projection -- Opportunity's 360-degree view is... More»
Oct. 15, 2009 | 15:44 PDT | 22:44 UTC
A brief word on Saturn's radius
I've had two people write in to correct my Phoebe ring post from yesterday. In that post I saidYou can measure the extent of the rings in kilometers, but astronomers and Cassini mission people both seem to find "Saturn radii" to be a handier unit... More»
Oct. 15, 2009 | 12:23 PDT | 19:23 UTC
Rhea, Enceladus, Mimas, and Tethys, oh my!
For a very long time Cassini has been in an orbit that carried it high above and below the plane of the rings. This has been fantastic for observations of the rings and planet during the equinox season, and has permitted some cool observations of... More»
Oct. 14, 2009 | 14:58 PDT | 21:58 UTC
Netherlands fireball
I was debating whether to write anything about a reported fireball that streaked across the sky in the Netherlands at roughly 19:00 local time (17:00 UTC) yesterday, October 13, but seeing this image ended my internal debate. Wow!Fireball over the... More»
Oct. 14, 2009 | 13:06 PDT | 20:06 UTC
The Phoebe ring
Sorry I'm late to this news, but as usual I'll try to compensate by being thorough! Last week, planetary astronomers Anne Verbiscer, Michael Skrutskie, and Doug Hamilton published a paper in Nature succinctly titled "Saturn's Largest Ring." In the... More»
Oct. 13, 2009 | 14:50 PDT | 21:50 UTC
That psychedelic M-cubed Moon movie explained
Advance warning: this entry may be a little technical for some. I hope that the following makes some sense! When I posted my writeup of the Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) results detailing the discovery of widespread water/hydroxyl in... More»
Oct. 13, 2009 | 10:56 PDT | 17:56 UTC
AMASE 2009: Testing future Mars surface instruments in the Arctic
I have just posted four more blog entries from Juan Diego Rodgriguez-Blanco detailing the work conducted during this year's Artic Mars Analogue Svalbard Expedition (AMASE), mostly concerning the testing of instruments that are being developed for... More»
Oct. 12, 2009 | 19:43 PDT | Oct. 13 02:43 UTC
OMG! Aurora!
This is SO cool. Unmannedspaceflight.com member Astro0 was fiddling around with an interesting-looking sequence of Cassini images when he discovered their purpose -- they were gathered in order to see if Cassini could catch aurorae flaring into... More»
Oct. 10, 2009 | 13:47 PDT | 20:47 UTC
Video from Palomar Observatory on LCROSS impact night
The Palomar Observatory adaptive optics image of the crater Cabeus remains the best I've seen from ground-based telescopes of the LCROSS impact site. They've now released a time-lapse video of 12 minutes' worth of observations, embedded below. ... More»
Oct. 9, 2009 | 14:08 PDT | 21:08 UTC
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Diviner detection of LCROSS impact
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Diviner team just released some preliminary views of their data taken during the LCROSS impact, which clearly shows the thermal signature from the crash into the Moon. I'm too tired for analysis so will lazily... More»
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