Blog Archive

Saturn's Hexagon Viewed from the Ground

Posted by Leigh Fletcher on 2013/02/01 05:49 CST | 2 comments

For the first time, amateur astronomers are capturing spectacular images of Saturn's bizarre north polar hexagon.

Pretty picture: Neptune and Triton

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/01 12:29 CST | 6 comments

On a lonely evening, what is one to do but to dip into archival space image data and surface with a gorgeous photo of a crescent Neptune and Triton?

Enceladus: A problem of contrast

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/01/30 07:00 CST | 6 comments

Time for my quarterly foray into the Cassini archival science data! The very first image I downloaded from the January 1, 2013 data release presented an interesting challenge to my image processing skill. I'll show you the pretty picture of Enceladus and then explain how I processed it.

Weather Report: Mars

Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/01/28 10:00 CST | 5 comments

Just like on Earth, clouds and storms often ripple through the Martian atmosphere. You can even check the daily weather report.

High-resolution Voyager 1 view of Jupiter with Io and Europa

Voyager 1 revisited: Io and Europa transiting Jupiter

Posted by Björn Jónsson on 2013/01/22 06:04 CST

What is the highest resolution global Jupiter mosaic that includes a satellite transit that can be assembled from Voyager images? Satellite transits are especially beautiful when the resolution is high enough for some details to be visible on the satellites so I decided to check this. And I was remarkably lucky.

Composite image of Toutatis from Chang'E 2 photos

More Chang'E 2 Toutatis flyby images

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/01/20 09:52 CST | 6 comments

Last week at a meeting of NASA's Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG), Han Li of the Chinese Academy of Sciences gave a lengthy presentation on Chang'E 2. Her presentation included a new sequence of photos from the December 13 Toutatis flyby.