Blog Archive

Saturn's storm: A quick turnaround from Hubble

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/03/28 04:13 CDT

Saturn's raging northern storm has been watched since it began by amateur astronomers, and now Cassini is getting in to the act too. Presumably once astronomers realized the magnitude of what was going on, some of Earth's great observatories were also occasionally pointed at the ringed planet to watch the storm grow.

Orcus and Vanth

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/11 01:49 CST | 1 comments

As part of a big, ongoing project to make a comparison chart of the dimensions and physical properties of solar system objects I've spent the morning tackling the difficult problem of summarizing the physical characteristics of the biggest things that are out there beyond Neptune.

Happy 2011, and an end to the 2010 advent calendar

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/01 11:43 CST

Welcome 2011! I can't wait for what this year has in store. The prize for all of you who have enjoyed opening each door in the Planetary Society's 2010 advent calendar is one of the best views we can get of one of the biggest objects in the asteroid belt, Vesta.

New maps of Pluto show pretty amazing amounts of surface change

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/02/04 02:17 CST

I just posted my writeup of today's press briefing on a new map of Pluto produced from Hubble images. The main conclusion was that Pluto has shown an astonishing amount of changes across its surface between 1994 and 2002 -- more, in fact, than any other solid surface in the solar system.

Farewell to Hubble, Obama Calls, Astronauts Testify to Congress as Shuttle is Set to Land

Posted by Ken Kremer on 2009/05/22 05:13 CDT

Farewell to Hubble, Obama Calls, Astronauts Testify to Congress as Shuttle is Set to Land

An Auspicious Week for Astronomy

Posted by Mark Adler on 2009/05/11 11:54 CDT | 1 comments

On Monday, if all goes well, we will launch the Space Shuttle to rejuvenate one the greatest scientific missions launched on or off the Earth: the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Deep Impact Impact onto Tempel 1 as witnessed by Hubble

Views of Tempel 1

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/07/04 10:47 CDT

It looks like the European Space Agency was busy overnight -- lots of great Earth- and space- based images of the impact have been appearing on various websites.