Blog Archive
Online Astronomy Course Update
Posted by Bruce Betts on 2012/03/06 11:27 CST
All the archived lectures from my free Introduction to Astronomy and the Solar System course, as well as links to the syllabus and how to watch the lectures live, can be found online.
New "Snapshot From Space": Defending Our Planet
Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/03/06 10:18 CST
A new installment of our "Snapshots" video series examines the threat posed by asteroids on collision courses with our home planet. Emily Lakdawalla explains why it's so important to find, understand and learn to deflect these potential civilization enders.
Iapetus' peerless equatorial ridge
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/02/22 01:49 CST
A new paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets by Dombard, Cheng, McKinnon, and KayI claims to explain how Iapetus' equatorial ridge formed. Cool!�
Emily's New Video Series: Snapshots From Space
Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/02/20 04:29 CST
This is the first episode of editor Emily Lakdawalla's new video series exploring the solar system.
Figuring out orbital positions from orbital elements
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/02/16 05:03 CST | 6 comments
A few times a year I find myself confronting a table full of numbers describing the orbits of things in the solar system, and cursing at myself because I've forgotten,�again, what all these numbers mean and how to manipulate them to get the particular numbers I want.
Has Mars Express MARSIS data proved that Mars once had a northern ocean?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/02/07 05:46 CST
There's been a bit of buzz on the Web this week regarding an ESA press release titled "ESA's Mars Express radar gives strong evidence for former Mars ocean." I don't ordinarily write about press-released science papers, but am making an exception for this one
Posted by Bill Nye on 2012/02/03 01:09 CST | 1 comments
I have just returned from my first Planetary Society-sponsored trip to Puerto Rico and this historic, remarkable, big idea of a telescope.
Guest Post: Patrick Donohue: Six days in the crater (day one)
Posted by Pat Donohue on 2012/02/03 10:02 CST
Guest Post: Patrick Donohue: Six days in the crater (day one)
Project for Awesome Video On Behalf of the Planetary Society
Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2011/12/22 12:22 CST | 1 comments
WhirledSol posted a cool Youtube tribute to the Planetary Society a year ago, and we just now found it! It has a nice explanation of why we are so passionate about space exploration.
Separating fact from speculation about Kepler-20's Earth-sized planets
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/20 04:53 CST
A large team of researchers has announced in a Nature article the discovery of not one, but two, Earth-sized planets orbiting a star named Kepler-20. This article separates the observational facts from the quite-likely-to-be-true inferences from the downstream speculations.
Notes on Dawn at Vesta from the 2011 American Geophysical Union meeting
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/08 03:19 CST
A report on the press briefing and talks from the Fall 2011 American Geophyisical Union meeting about the data on Vesta collected so far by Dawn.
First-ever high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar image of Enceladus
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/01 07:22 CST
On the November 6, 2011 flyby of Enceladus -- the third such flyby in just a few weeks -- the Cassini mission elected to take a SAR swath instead of using the optical instruments for once. So here it is: the first-ever SAR swath on Enceladus. In fact, the only other places we've ever done SAR imaging are Earth, the Moon, Venus, Iapetus, and Titan.
Earth observing satellites record large Arctic ozone loss
Posted by Jason Davis on 2011/10/14 06:31 CDT
Data from Earth observing satellites Aura and CALIPSO have shown record losses of seasonal ozone in the Arctic.
Eris and embargoes (or: don't fear Ingelfinger!)
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/10/12 04:49 CDT
Eris and embargoes (or: don't fear Ingelfinger!)
Notes from Day 5 of the EPSC/DPS meeting: Saturn's storm, Phobos, and Lutetia
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/10/07 07:09 CDT
Notes from Day 5 of the EPSC/DPS meeting: Saturn's storm, Phobos, and Lutetia
Notes from Day 3 of the EPSC/DPS meeting (all about MESSENGER)
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/10/05 11:04 CDT
Notes from Day 3 of the EPSC/DPS meeting (all about MESSENGER)
Some first impressions of EPSC-DPS meeting
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/10/03 11:55 CDT
Some first impressions of EPSC-DPS meeting
Tethys and Dione don't seem to be active after all
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/09/23 01:09 CDT
Tethys and Dione don't seem to be active after all
Reading Itokawa's life history from microscopic samples
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/09/20 01:58 CDT
Reading Itokawa's life history from microscopic samples
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/09/16 08:44 CDT
Video: Zooming around Vesta











