Blog Archive

Martian clouds in motion

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/08/19 10:36 CDT

Martian clouds in motion

Watch Saturn's storms spin with VIMS

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/04/28 01:15 CDT

A lot of attention has been paid recently to a storm in Saturn's northern hemisphere that is large and bright enough to be visible from Earth, but Saturn's atmosphere actually features lots more swirling storms. They can be hard to see, at least in visible wavelengths.

Pluto's atmosphere changes really fast!

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/04/21 10:27 CDT

Pluto's atmosphere has been a subject of fascination for planetary astronomers since -- well, since astronomers first discovered that it had an atmosphere in the early '90s. The interest is partly because it's fascinating that such a distant and cold world is capable of supporting an atmosphere, and partly because the presence of the atmosphere confounds all attempts to measure Pluto's size precisely.

Some recent pictures of Saturn's northern storm

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/07 04:35 CST

There is a huge storm that's spreading across so much of Saturn that it's been readily visible even from Earth-based telescopes. Over the past couple of days a couple of new images of Saturn have appeared that show just how enormous the storm is today.

Jupiter's faded belt: It's happened before, and it'll happen again

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/06/16 05:07 CDT

When I wrote a post about Jupiter's missing South Equatorial Belt in May, I had three main questions: how long did it take for the belt to go away, has this happened before, and how can a planet as big as Jupiter change its appearance so quickly?

A multi-ring glory surrounds an aircraft's shadow

A fun picture for holiday travel

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/11/22 02:37 CST

A fun NASA explainer just crossed my email inbox and I thought I'd share it.

An update on the Huygens Doppler Wind Experiment

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/11/08 03:28 CST

While I was at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in Cambridge in September I had a chance to chat with David Atkinson, who's a member of the Doppler Wind Experiment team on Huygens. They and the other instrument teams have been plugging away at analyzing their data.

News: Radio Astronomers Rescue Science Results for Huygens' Doppler Wind Experiment

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/02/09 10:00 CST

Earth's radio astronomers have saved the day for one of the Huygens instrument teams. Today, the Doppler Wind Experiment (DWE) team announced their first science results, despite losing nearly all of their expected data.