Blogs
Blog Archive
On space kindness and the Chelyabinsk meteor
Posted by Vitaliy Egorov on 2013/10/04 07:04 CDT | 1 comments
Through an act of kindness, we now have images of the Chelyabinsk meteor trail from Russia's Elektro-L satellite.
Relative and absolute ages in the histories of Earth and the Moon: The Geologic Time Scale
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/09/30 03:04 CDT
A few days ago, I wrote a post about the basins of the Moon -- a result of a trip down a rabbit hole of book research. Here's the next step in that journey: the Geologic Time Scales of Earth and the Moon.
Caution: Spacecraft Under Construction
Visiting JPL's high bay clean room with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden
Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2013/08/20 10:39 CDT | 1 comments
Join Emily Lakdawalla and Mat Kaplan inside JPL's High Bay 1, where two Earth-revealing missions are being readied for launch.
Beautiful science by Elektro-L
Posted by Vitaliy Egorov on 2013/08/08 03:54 CDT | 5 comments
Six months ago, I wrote about the Russian weather satellite Elektro-L, which has more than two years of successful experience in the geostationary orbit. Then I promised that I would be here to share the materials that we collected. I think it's time to deliver on the promise.
Pretty picture: Looking backward
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/07/23 05:03 CDT | 15 comments
Here it is: the view from Saturn of our Earthly home, one and a half billion kilometers away. We see Earth and the Moon through a thin veil of faintly blue ice crystals, the outskirts of Saturn's E ring. Earth is just a bright dot -- a bit brighter than the other stars in the image, but no brighter than any planet (like Saturn!) in our own sky.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/07/22 05:03 CDT | 3 comments
A new picture of the Earth-Moon system from MESSENGER, taken the same day we were told to "Wave at Saturn." Updated with a neat photo taken from much closer to Earth from a similar perspective.
Return of the Pale Blue Dot
Join the Wave at Saturn (and Mercury)!
Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2013/07/18 11:27 CDT | 4 comments
You can be part of a planetwide group photo as Cassini and MESSENGER turn their cameras Earthward on July 19.
Posted by Ralph Lorenz on 2013/07/17 01:13 CDT
The fictional world Tatooine, scene of action in the Star Wars movies, is named after a town in Tunisia, where parts of the movies were filmed. The desert backdrops against which the movies were filmed are real terrestrial landscapes, which prove to be perhaps unexpectedly dynamic.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/07/12 06:00 CDT | 3 comments
NASA recently shared a gloriously detailed image of an unusual clear day in Alaska as seen from the Terra satellite.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/06/27 10:55 CDT | 9 comments
It had never occurred to me to think about geostationary satellites in Mars orbit before reading a new paper by Juan Silva and Pilar Romero. The paper shows that it takes a lot more work to maintain a stationary orbit at an arbitrary longitude at Mars than it does at Earth.
Posted by Jim Bell on 2013/06/03 03:53 CDT | 6 comments
I'm absolutely floored when I stop to think that our beautiful blue ocean is only one of perhaps a half dozen or more oceans on other worlds in our solar system, and only one of probably millions (or more) oceans on other Earth-like planets in our galaxy. Oceans abound!
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/04/21 03:07 CDT | 6 comments
Mars and Earth share a truly striking family resemblance, but there's no mistaking which one is home.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/03/18 04:22 CDT
Some lovely, rarely-seen images from the MESSENGER mission.
Pretty picture: a moon transit
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/21 05:52 CST | 5 comments
A reader comment inspired me to dig up an oldie but a goodie: a sequence of photos of the Moon transiting Earth, seen from a very long way away,
A forgotten image of Earth and the Moon
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/13 07:45 CST | 4 comments
While researching another story, I came across an image I don't remember ever seeing before, of a moonrise from an unexpected source.
The Earth is a Planet: Why We Explore Space
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/02/11 10:50 CST
Why spend effort and scarce resources on space exploration when we have so many problems here at home? Turns out, there are some pretty good reasons.
Browsing Landsat data is a lot easier than I thought it was
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/08 05:05 CST | 2 comments
With the Landsat Data Continuity Mission scheduled to launch on Monday, there's been a lot of Tweeting about Landsat, and through one such Tweet I learned about a resource that I hadn't known existed before: the LandsatLook Viewer. This is a graphical interface to more than a decade worth of Landsat data, a tremendous resource for anyone interested in Earth's changing surface, natural or manmade.
Galileo Messengers: Cruise to Venus, Earth, Gaspra, Earth, Ida, and almost to Jupiter
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/05 08:40 CST | 2 comments
It's taken me a year to face the emotionally draining task of reading and writing about Galileo's cruise phase as chronicled in the mission's newsletters.
Pretty picture: Landsat view of southern Greenland
Posted by Björn Jónsson on 2012/11/13 05:24 CST
This is a very large (19000 pixels square) mosaic of the fjords and glaciers of southern Greenland. I had been interested for a long time in experimenting with the processing of Earth satellite imagery just to get a comparison to the other planets.
Hurricane Sandy: Thanks for lives saved already
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/10/29 11:32 CDT
Today hurricane Sandy is a major threat to life and property across the west coast of the northern Atlantic ocean. I just want to give thanks in advance to all the people who have devoted their careers to making sure that Americans have sufficient warning of devastating, unstoppable weather events like this one.
JOIN THE
PLANETARY SOCIETY
Our Curiosity Knows No Bounds!
Become a member of The Planetary Society and together we will create the future of space exploration.
Connect With Us
Facebook! Twitter! Google+ and more…
Continue the conversation with our online community!
