Blog Archive

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/20 02:40 CDT

Just a pretty global view of one of Saturn's flock of icy moons, newly processed from archival data by Gordan Ugarkovic.

Pretty picture: Halo on a halo?

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/15 05:21 CDT | 6 comments

An interesting set of images of Titan that Cassini took recently shows a peculiar cap at Titan's south pole.

Artist's views of a night sky transformed by a galaxy merger

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/04 12:25 CDT | 2 comments

A measurement of the Andromeda galaxy's proper motion shows it's coming directly at us, and will collide with the Milky Way in 4 billion years. The event will transform the appearance of our night sky.

A solar eclipse - as viewed from the Moon

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/28 11:19 CDT | 3 comments

A solar eclipse isn't just a spiffy sight to Earthlings; it looks pretty cool to lunar dwellers as well.

Methone, an egg in Saturn orbit?

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/21 02:58 CDT | 8 comments

Cassini obtained its first high-resolution images of Methone on May 20, 2012. Methone is one of the smallest regular moons of Saturn, having a diameter of only about 3 kilometers. It was the first moon that Cassini discovered, very early in Cassini's mission at Saturn, in 2004.

A stunning view of Mars from Argyre to Thaumasia

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/18 06:33 CDT

Image magician Daniel Machacek has done it again, producing a jaw-dropping view of Mars from Viking Orbiter 1, featuring a frosty Argyre basin and stretching across to a series of faults called Thaumasia Fossae.

Cool video: Jupiter, its moons, a comet, and...the Sun?

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/16 11:45 CDT | 1 comments

Here's a neat video posted by SungrazerComets (the Twitter identity of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's Sungrazing Comets website) this morning. It's an animation of images taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on May 13 and 14, when Jupiter was passing through solar conjunction

In Honor of JUICE, a New View of Europa

Posted by Ted Stryk on 2012/05/07 05:30 CDT | 2 comments

To celebrate ESA's selection of the JUICE mission to Jupiter, Ted Stryk produced a new global view of Europa from Galileo data.

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.

For use as thumbnail for 3D anaglyph posts

3D view of an unnamed lunar crater

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/03 03:18 CDT

Grab your red-blue 3D glasses and dive in to this small but spectacular unnamed lunar crater as seen in a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photo.

Swirl patterns in a HiRISE image of a lava flow on Mars

Swirly lava patterns in beautiful HiRISE images

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/26 05:19 CDT | 4 comments

In a channel near a pedestal crater on the plains of Cerberus Palus, Mars, there are wacky swirl patterns.

Ski Helene?

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/20 01:01 CDT | 2 comments

I enthused about these Helene images the first time they came down from Cassini, and then forgot about them, and then was thrilled anew a couple of weeks ago when Daniel Macháček posted his version, processed from data published by the Cassini imaging team on April 1.

Pretty pictures from Cassini's weekend flybys of Enceladus and Tethys

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/16 03:11 CDT

Cassini flew past both Enceladus and Tethys on April 14. Here's a cool animation of its approach to Enceladus' plumes, and a pretty global picture of Tethys.

Pretty Pictures: Amazing Asteroid Lutetia

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/10 02:00 CDT

A long-awaited data set is finally public (well, long-awaited by me, at least). The Rosetta team has now published their data from the July 10, 2010 flyby of asteroid (21) Lutetia. This data set is absolutely stunning, and my friends in the amateur image processing community wasted no time in creating art out of it.

Nearly the last view of Endeavour with its life-blood flowing

Posted by Ben Cooper on 2012/04/08 11:59 CDT

After 12 years of photographing the space shuttle, and even getting to work for NASA as a photographer for the final three years of the program, I never had the privilege of going inside the cockpit until the program was over.

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.

New views of Lunokhod 1 and Luna 17 from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/14 08:47 CDT

It is always thrilling to see relics of human exploration out there on other worlds. Today, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team posted some new photos of two defunct spacecraft: the Luna 17 lander and the Lunokhod 1 rover. I've posted images of the two craft before, but the ones released today are much better.

Pretty Picture: A snapshot of Voyager 1's departure from Jupiter

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/13 04:08 CDT

In this week's Snapshots from Space video, I talk about the Voyager 1 images of Jupiter -- how many there are (tens of thousands), and what a challenge they represent for image processors. But, I promise, the effort is worth it. Here's just one example: it's a color, crescent view of Jupiter, taken by Voyager 1 as it departed.

Cassini image of Saturn and Mimas, lit by ringlight, processed by Gordan Ugarkovic

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.