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What Saturn's moons can tell us about comets (Notes from LPSC 2012)
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/03 05:20 CDT
My notes on a two-part presentation by collaborators Jim Richardson and David Minton about the sizes of things in the Kuiper belt, a story they told by looking at Saturn's moons. How does that work? What connects Saturn's moons to the Kuiper belt is craters.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/27 10:34 CST
Just a few of the amazing photos of Comet Lovejoy that have been taken from the southern hemisphere over the last few days. Comet Lovejoy is the first Kreutz sungrazer to have been discovered from the ground in 40 years, and after its surprising survival of its passage close to the Sun, it has been putting on a spectacular show in southern skies.
Posted by Jason Davis on 2011/12/22 10:45 CST | 1 comments
A timeline of one of the most memorable solar events in recent memory: the observations by six Sun-observing spacecraft of Comet Lovejoy making its perihelion passage.
Video: Comet Lovejoy entered SOHO's LASCO C3 field of view this morning!
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/14 09:37 CST
An animation of comet Lovejoy entering the field of view of one of SOHO's Sun-monitoring cameras.
Sungrazing with Lovejoy's Comet
Posted by Jason Davis on 2011/12/06 10:42 CST
Observations of the newly sighted Kreutz sungrazer comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) from the ground and from SOHO (a joint NASA/ESA satellite) and STEREO (NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory).
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/08/12 12:52 CDT
Amateur astronomer Patrick Wiggins sent me this neat little animation of comet Garradd moving against background stars through an hour's worth of observing. I'm not any kind of astronomer but if I were I think I would get a kick out of looking at things that appear to move within one night of watching -- asteroids, comets, Jupiter's spots. I'm impatient that way.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/05/02 11:26 CDT
Space.com has taken advantage of the infinitely scrollable nature of Web pages to produce a really cool infographic on the scales of orbital distances in the solar system.
LPSC 2011: Kirby Runyon on Mars, the Moon, Hartley 2, and Ganymede
Posted by Kirby Runyon on 2011/03/15 01:57 CDT
Kirby Runyon, a second-year grad student at Temple University, offered to send me some writeups of selected presentations from last week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, and I enthusiastically agreed.
LPSC 2011: Day 3: Deep Impact at Hartley 2
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/03/10 01:17 CST
Wednesday's sessions at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) on the Deep Impact flyby of Hartley 2 were one of two that I was most looking forward to, the other being this morning's talks on Hayabusa's samples from Itokawa, about which I don't yet have any notes. I am again grateful to Franck Marchis and Andy Rivkin for sending me their notes on Hartley 2.
365 Days of Astronomy Podcast: Stardust at Tempel 1
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/28 11:45 CST
Yesterday the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast aired my contribution, Stardust at Tempel 1: The First Second Trip to a Comet.
Stardust update: last image taken today
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/24 05:50 CST
According to the Stardust website, the spacecraft has continued taking navigational camera images of Tempel 1 since last Monday's flyby. But "This will end with a Navcam calibration that will take place [today]. This will be the end of the official Tempel 1 encounter activities. Planning is under way for the decommissioning of the spacecraft."
Sounds of Stardust, and a cool morphed Tempel 1 video
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/18 01:26 CST
Here's two more items from Tuesday's flyby of comet Tempel 1 by the Stardust spacecraft to add to my previous roundup of Tempel 1 data. The first represents data from a dust counting instrument, portrayed as sound, and the second is a terrific morph animation of the flyby produced by Daniel Macháček.
Some early scientific impressions of Stardust's Tempel 1 flyby
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/16 03:20 CST
I've spent a day with the Stardust images from Tempel 1, and had a chat with co-investigator Jessica Sunshine, so here are a bunch of images with some preliminary scientific commentary.
Highlights from today's Stardust Tempel 1 press briefing
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/15 03:10 CST
It was a very happy science team at this afternoon's press briefing following the Stardust encounter with Tempel 1.
Quick-and-dirty animation of Stardust Tempel 1 images through closest approach
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/15 11:05 CST
Here's a quick-and-dirty animated GIF of the 39 images of Tempel 1 that have arrived on Earth so far from Stardust. I've put a big watermark on this animation because it's not a final product.
High-res images of Tempel 1 from Stardust now arriving
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/15 10:09 CST
I really didn't expect these images to look so good! I'd prepared myself for blurry images and a lot of squinting to try to match up features in pictures between Deep Impact and Stardust views of Tempel 1, but in fact the resemblance is obvious and you can clearly see that they successfully imaged the area in which Deep Impact's Impactor craft collided with the comet.
First image from Stardust! ...but a delay for the close-approach ones
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/15 02:25 CST
Here it is, the first image from Stardust of Tempel 1 during the close-approach phase!
Stardust flies by Tempel 1 in 5 hours, and I'll be watching!
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/14 04:42 CST
Stardust is very close to the last major act of its mission: the flyby of Tempel 1, which will take place at 20:40 PST (04:40 UTC). Here's a summary of the recent and current status of the mission, and how to follow the events over the next 24 hours.
Stardust update: Almost to Tempel 1
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/10 11:06 CST
We're coming up on the final days of Stardust's approach to Tempel 1. The flyby takes place on February 15 at 04:56 UTC (February 14 at 20:56 PST).
Spectacular animation of Halley's comet
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2009/11/26 09:11 CST
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