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Blog Archive
Super cool Phobos and Deimos animations from Mars Express
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/10/03 02:17 CDT
I've been delving in to the Mars Express image archive this week, checking out its images of Phobos, and found a couple of really cool time-series of images to assemble into animations.
The "Starship Century" Beckons
Gregory and James Benford return to Planetary Radio
Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2013/10/01 10:30 CDT
The Benford brothers provide inspiration and hard fact in their excellent new anthology about interstellar travel.
Pretty picture: spectacular Saturn and Titan
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/08/15 08:04 CDT | 3 comments
A lovely view of the ringed planet and its hazy moon seen from nearly behind them just a few days ago.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/07/29 01:18 CDT | 4 comments
Pushing back the frontier, and filling in the blank spaces on the map.
Favorite space images: "Many Worlds"
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/06/17 10:58 CDT | 1 comments
For this evening's Planetary Radio Live event, Mat Kaplan asked me to do a presentation of some favorite space images. I told him that picking favorite space images is like picking favorite children; it's not possible because they're all my favorite. To narrow things down, I decided to explore a theme: "Many Worlds."
Pretty picture: Neptune and Triton
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/01 12:29 CST | 6 comments
On a lonely evening, what is one to do but to dip into archival space image data and surface with a gorgeous photo of a crescent Neptune and Triton?
Curiosity catches sunspots along with Phobos and Deimos transits
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/10/03 07:15 CDT | 2 comments
Curiosity has been shooting photos of the Sun as Phobos and Deimos cross its face, and -- as far as I can tell -- captured sunspots as well.
Posted by Bill Gray on 2012/08/25 10:55 CDT | 4 comments
An update on China's second lunar orbiter, Chang'e 2, which is now heading for asteroid Toutatis.
Pretty pictures from Cassini's recent Dione flyby
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/04 05:44 CDT
Cassini performed its last of three close encounters with Enceladus for 2012 two days ago, and followed the flyby with some spectacular images of Dione.
Pretty picture: Janus and Saturn
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/04 12:15 CDT
In the last few days as it's rounded periapsis in its current orbit of Saturn, Cassini has taken a lot of great photos of Saturn's moons. One series of photos was taken from pretty close to Janus, a moon about a third the diameter of Enceladus that orbits between the F and G rings. And among those, several were taken with the moon sitting in front of Saturn.
Pretty picture: A study in ringlight
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/08 02:27 CST
Clearly, this is Saturn, and its rings, and if you look closer you can see a tiny circle, on top of the rings, which is Mimas, and two stars in the background. It should look weird to you that while the rings are bright, Mimas is a black dot. What is happening here? Nearly everything in this picture is lit by light that has not arrived directly from the Sun.
Pretty pictures from Cassini's recent Dione flyby
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/22 11:52 CST
Cassini flew close by Dione on December 12 and, as usual, the close pass provided opportunities for lots of dramatic photos, not just of Dione, but of other moons wandering by in the background.
Pretty picture: Mimas scuttles behind Dione
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/12 06:36 CST
Images from the Cassini spacecraft's flyby of Dione.
Pretty pictures: Dancing moons
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/09/28 12:28 CDT
Pretty pictures: Dancing moons
Lots of great stuff in the latest Cassini data release
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/04/13 04:56 CDT
I've got some lovely pictures from Saturn to show you! Every three months, the Cassini mission dumps gigabytes worth of precious Saturn data into the Planetary Data System, and the latest gift came on April 1. This particular pile of data, which was taken between April 1 and June 30, 2010, contains a lot of really terrific moon observations.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/31 03:14 CST
Here's an image I've been meaning to post for months, a new mosaic from Voyager 1 by Ted Stryk of Io crossing Jupiter's terminator as it neared closest approach.
Two fine color Cassini animations: Prometheus rotating, Tethys and Dione dancing
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/20 11:23 CST
Daniel Macháček has reached into the dark side of Prometheus and pulled out an incredible amount of detail where the potato-shaped moon is illuminated by Saturnshine. He produced an animation that morphs among the three sets of four-filter color images that Cassini snapped during the flyby.
Goodies from the January 11 Rhea flyby
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/12 10:44 CST
Cassini got some incredibly tricky shots during its January 11 Rhea flyby!
Solar eclipses from space: Hinode and SDO
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/06 11:33 CST
Two spacecraft that keep their ever-watchful eyes on the Sun -- NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and JAXA's Hinode -- were doing their thing, when something large wandered past: the Moon.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/01/06 11:50 CST
CoRoT-7b was the first unambiguously rocky planet to be discovered and was quite small, at under five Earth masses. But a press release issued today suggests that its history probably has little to do with Earth's.
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