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Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/20 02:40 CDT
Just a pretty global view of one of Saturn's flock of icy moons, newly processed from archival data by Gordan Ugarkovic.
Pretty picture: Halo on a halo?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/15 05:21 CDT | 6 comments
An interesting set of images of Titan that Cassini took recently shows a peculiar cap at Titan's south pole.
Steins, a jewel in the asteroid belt
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/13 09:00 CDT | 1 comments
A notice of some new names for features on asteroid 2867 Steins inspired me to dig up the data set from the September 5, 2008 Rosetta flyby and explore it to see what it contained.
Video: Saturn makes its own drama (with a little help)
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/22 05:43 CDT | 5 comments
The apparently simple device of running Cassini images together like a flipbook makes for a dramatic movie, especially with the help of well-timed musical cues.
Methone, an egg in Saturn orbit?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/21 02:58 CDT | 8 comments
Cassini obtained its first high-resolution images of Methone on May 20, 2012. Methone is one of the smallest regular moons of Saturn, having a diameter of only about 3 kilometers. It was the first moon that Cassini discovered, very early in Cassini's mission at Saturn, in 2004.
A stunning view of Mars from Argyre to Thaumasia
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/18 06:33 CDT
Image magician Daniel Machacek has done it again, producing a jaw-dropping view of Mars from Viking Orbiter 1, featuring a frosty Argyre basin and stretching across to a series of faults called Thaumasia Fossae.
In Honor of JUICE, a New View of Europa
Posted by Ted Stryk on 2012/05/07 05:30 CDT | 2 comments
To celebrate ESA's selection of the JUICE mission to Jupiter, Ted Stryk produced a new global view of Europa from Galileo data.
Pretty pictures from Cassini's recent Dione flyby
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/04 05:44 CDT
Cassini performed its last of three close encounters with Enceladus for 2012 two days ago, and followed the flyby with some spectacular images of Dione.
3D view of an unnamed lunar crater
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/03 03:18 CDT
Grab your red-blue 3D glasses and dive in to this small but spectacular unnamed lunar crater as seen in a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photo.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/20 01:01 CDT | 2 comments
I enthused about these Helene images the first time they came down from Cassini, and then forgot about them, and then was thrilled anew a couple of weeks ago when Daniel Macháček posted his version, processed from data published by the Cassini imaging team on April 1.
Pretty Pictures: Amazing Asteroid Lutetia
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/10 02:00 CDT
A long-awaited data set is finally public (well, long-awaited by me, at least). The Rosetta team has now published their data from the July 10, 2010 flyby of asteroid (21) Lutetia. This data set is absolutely stunning, and my friends in the amateur image processing community wasted no time in creating art out of it.
Pretty picture: Janus and Saturn
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/04 12:15 CDT
In the last few days as it's rounded periapsis in its current orbit of Saturn, Cassini has taken a lot of great photos of Saturn's moons. One series of photos was taken from pretty close to Janus, a moon about a third the diameter of Enceladus that orbits between the F and G rings. And among those, several were taken with the moon sitting in front of Saturn.
Hey amateurs! ESA's running an image processing contest: "Hubble's Hidden Treasures!"
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/27 04:26 CDT
Here's a newly announced contest that is right up my alley and, I hope, of interest to regular readers of this blog. ESA has just announced "Hubble's Hidden Treasures," a contest to encourage what I've been trying to get people to do for years: trawl through the Hubble archives to find unappreciated tresures of photos and make them pretty for public consumption. They have two categories, one for newbies (who can use image processing tools provided on ESA's website) and one for more serious amateurs (who can use other software).
Snapshots From Space Video: Revealing Jupiter's (Mostly) Unseen Treasures
Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/03/18 01:46 CDT | 2 comments
Tens of thousands of Jupiter images were taken by the Voyager spacecraft, but relatively few have been processed to reveal their true beauty and wonder. The latest Snapshots video from Emily Lakdawalla explains why.
Pretty Picture: A snapshot of Voyager 1's departure from Jupiter
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/13 04:08 CDT
In this week's Snapshots from Space video, I talk about the Voyager 1 images of Jupiter -- how many there are (tens of thousands), and what a challenge they represent for image processors. But, I promise, the effort is worth it. Here's just one example: it's a color, crescent view of Jupiter, taken by Voyager 1 as it departed.
Pretty picture: A study in ringlight
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/08 02:27 CST
Clearly, this is Saturn, and its rings, and if you look closer you can see a tiny circle, on top of the rings, which is Mimas, and two stars in the background. It should look weird to you that while the rings are bright, Mimas is a black dot. What is happening here? Nearly everything in this picture is lit by light that has not arrived directly from the Sun.
Pretty pictures: Voyager 2 at Jupiter
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/02 01:22 CST
Here are two perfect examples of Voyager 2's amazing untapped treasures.
Snapshots From Space: NASA's Treasure Trove of Unprocessed Images
Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/02/27 10:22 CST
The second episode of Emily Lakdawalla's new video series reveals the gigantic library of solar system images captured by NASA spacecraft, and explains why we've seen so few of them. Emily says they're all online, waiting for space geeks to turn them into gold.
Pretty picture: A sunset postcard and a special shadow from Opportunity
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/02/21 04:31 CST
It took Don Davis many hours of meticulous labor to assemble this beautiful postcard from Mars.
More Dawn Vesta approach images: First color views
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/02/17 11:37 CST
On June 30, Dawn stopped thrusting for a full Vestian day -- five hours and 20 minutes -- and just watched the asteroid rotate. But unlike the previous observations, they used all of Dawn's color filters to acquire the best-ever color photos of the lumpy world.
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