The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
First images from Venus Express VIRTIS
Apr. 14, 2006 | 15:36 PDT | 22:36 UTC
So, let the data gathering begin! ESA released the first images from Venus Express' VIRTIS imaging spectrometer yesterday, and I managed to get an email exchange in with VIRTIS co-investigator Kevin Baines before he left for the airport to return to the U.S. from Germany. (I hope he did not bring home the same souvenir head cold that I did.) While in Germany Kevin and I made the discovery that not only did we both once attend the same teensy college -- Amherst College, in Massachusetts -- but that since he graduated in '76 and I in '96, we will likely be seeing each other there every five years for the rest of our natural lives as we return there for our respective class reunions. It's a small world.
At the same time that Venus Express is settling into orbit and warming up its instruments, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is doing the same thing. Yesterday they released the first views from CTX and MARCI, the cameras that provide wide-scale context views to the orbiter's other, much sharper-eyed but narrower-viewed instruments like HiRISE and CRISM. (Visit our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter instruments page for descriptions and explanations of all these instruments.) In fact, the first CTX images do provide context for the first HiRISE images that were released a week ago (stories on those here and here). The first MARCI image is kind of unexceptional-looking, but Malin Space Science Systems kindly accompanied the release with a very detailed explanation of how MARCI color images are made.
Finally, I should mention a couple more news items that came down the pipeline while I have been traveling: first of all, a Hubble measurement of 2003 UB313 suggests that while it's bigger than Pluto, it's not by much, which is a different story than radio telescope observations told earlier this year. And the other item is that, thanks to the support of our members, The Planetary Society has just dedicated a new optical SETI telescope at Oak Ridge Observatory in Massachusetts.
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