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Triple asteroid 1994 CC rotation animation
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2009/08/06 10:39 CDT
From the "just plain cool" department. I love animations of planetary images and I love radar images of asteroids -- so this animation is doubly cool.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2009/01/21 06:48 CST
Spirit's been getting some nice views of the spot it spent all of 2008 in, "Home Plate north." Meanwhile, Opportunity is motoring along.
What do we know about Uranus' moons? Part 1
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2009/01/20 06:26 CST
I got an urge to dive in to the Voyager image archives and see what exactly we have here on Earth to base our understanding of the Uranian moons on.
Opportunity and Spirit updates: Both are now driving
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/10/31 01:26 CDT
Another day, another drive: on sols 1,693 and 1,695 the Opportunity rover conducted two more lengthy drives to the south, totaling almost 200 meters. On the other side of the planet, Spirit is FINALLY in motion again.
Opportunity is really hitting the highway
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/10/28 01:10 CDT
Victoria crater, the site of a Mars year's worth of study, is now far over the horizon, as Opportunity has lately completed a series of very long drives. Opportunity is once again sailing the sand seas of Meridiani Planum.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/07/09 08:39 CDT
Eduardo Tesheiner was kind enough to send me an updated version of his route map for Opportunity so we can get a sense of just how close the rover is getting to Cape Verde.
Beautiful mosaic of the Voyager mountains
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/07/06 04:15 CDT
One of my favorite amateur image magicians, Gordan Ugarkovic continues to play around with the amazing data recently released by the Cassini mission, covering the Iapetus encounter of last September. Here's a lovely mosaic he just put together of the Voyager Mountains.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/06/20 04:43 CDT
The Phoenix mission confirmed it this morning: the disappearing act pulled by those chunks of bright material in the Dodo trench pretty much nails the identification of the bright material as ice, which is great news for the mission. Ice is what Phoenix went all the way to Mars to study; it's what the team has been aiming for all these years.
Some beautiful video from the Spirit and Opportunity landing sites
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/05/12 06:02 CDT
A majority of the people who work in planetary geology are usually associated with one or maybe two missions, doing all their research on the results from one instrument on one mission. But there are a few people whose expertise cuts across many space missions, and an even smaller number of people who seem to work on almost everything. Randy Kirk is one of those people.
A bit of fun with Mars Express images of Phobos
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/04/16 05:59 CDT
I recently found the focus to work on a big project: namely, downloading and examining every Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera image of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos.
Shadows cast from Victoria's capes and bays
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/04/14 03:51 CDT
This is from the "just plain cool" department: An animation of the shadows of Victoria Crater as seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, courtesy of Doug Ellison.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/03/24 05:46 CDT
The HiRISE instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter really is a spy camera in space. Check out this sequence of nine images from the HiRISE archives, which Doug Ellison pulled together into an animation covering more than a year of Spirit's mission.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/02/19 04:40 CST
There was a press release from the Cassini mission today about a pile of papers (14 of them!) being published in the journal Icarus about Saturn's icy moons. I haven't had time to read more than the overview article yet, but I wanted to come up with a graphic for an overview of Saturn's moons, and I couldn't resist delving into the massive database of Cassini images to produce something new
Opportunity watches the clouds drift by
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/02/12 04:11 CST
Opportunity is now following a rather leisurely autumn schedule, according to the latest update on the mission website. Some of the work Opportunity is doing involves staring skyward, looking for patterns in the clouds that pass overhead at this time of year. One of the guys at unmannedspaceflight.com has put together some nifty animations of the wispy cloud patterns.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/01/04 11:39 CST
Antares dims and brightens as it passes behind the rings as seen from Cassini in this animation.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2007/10/18 04:07 CDT
The Mars Exploration Rovers have left wheel tracks all over their landing sites, but for some reason this pair of wheel tracks, left in the sand ripple on the rim of Victoria crater and now viewed from below, tickled my fancy. Thanks to James Canvin for the lovely panorama.
Opportunity takes first gingerly steps into Victoria Crater
Posted by Doug Ellison on 2007/09/13 05:11 CDT
Mars Exploration Rover scientists, engineers and enthusiasts have been playing the waiting game for 10 weeks, watching the much-reported dust storm subside so that Opportunity could get back to doing what it does best - exploring craters.
Dust storm update: A rover's-eye-view
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2007/08/29 05:06 CDT
I haven't written an update on the dust storm at Mars recently for two reasons. For one, the rovers are out of immediate danger, so it wasn't as urgent. The other reason is that Jim Bell wanted Cornell to issue a press release with updated versions of the images and animations I've been putting together from the rovers' "tau" images.
High tau for Spirit and Opportunity
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2007/07/30 12:26 CDT
Over the weekend I fiddled with the "tau" images that Mars Exploration Rover Pancam lead Jim Bell gave me, and I produced a couple of different ways to visualize the darkness of the rovers' skies.
The Orbital Dance of Epimetheus and Janus
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2006/02/07 11:00 CST
Saturn is surrounded by a crowded family of rings and moons, and two of those moons -- Epimetheus and Janus -- orbit Saturn so close together that it seems as though their different orbital speeds should make them crash into each other.
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