Blogs
Blog Archive
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.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/08/20 01:27 CDT | 7 comments
Beautiful maps of a mysterious place.
Jani Radebaugh, Titan Explorer
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/07/23 03:47 CDT | 4 comments
Robotic space exploration is human exploration. Meet one of the people behind the machines.
How radar really works: The steps involved before getting an image
Posted by Alessondra Springmann on 2013/06/24 02:10 CDT | 3 comments
Arecibo Observatory is known for its 1000-foot diameter telescope and its appearances in Goldeneye and Contact. Aside from battling Bond villains and driving red diesel Jeeps around the telescope (grousing at the site director about the funding status of projects is optional), several hundred hours a year of telescope time at Arecibo go toward radar studies of asteroids.
Say "hi!" to asteroid -- actually, asteroids -- (285263) 1998 QE2
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/05/30 06:51 CDT | 8 comments
A large asteroid is passing reasonably close to Earth in a few hours, and astronomers at the great radio telescopes at Goldstone and Arecibo are zapping it. The latest discovery: QE2, like many asteroids, is a binary.
How radar tracking of asteroids helps us know where they are
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/05/23 11:32 CDT | 5 comments
Why don't we have any photos of asteroid 2012 DA14 if it came so close?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/19 03:13 CST | 2 comments
A frequently-asked question last week was: if asteroid 2012 DA14 is coming so close to Earth, why hasn't anyone taken any pictures of it? Now that 2012 DA14 has whizzed past us, we do finally have some radar pictures of it, but they still may not satisfy everyone.
Asteroid 4179 Toutatis' upcoming encounters with Earth and Chang'E 2
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/12/06 12:19 CST | 6 comments
Near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis will be passing within 7 million kilometers of Earth on December 12. Both radio telescopes and the Chang'E 2 spacecraft will be acquiring images.
DPS 2012, Tuesday: Titan's surface
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/10/17 10:22 CDT | 4 comments
Tuesday morning at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting featured talks on the surface composition and landforms on Titan, including lakes and "hot cross buns."
Examining India's new RISAT 1 Earth observation satellite
Posted by Jason Davis on 2012/05/02 12:03 CDT | 1 comments
Last week, India launched RISAT 1, a new Earth-observing satellite. How does its synthetic aperture radar compare to that of Envisat, which has fallen silent?
Notes from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference: Making Cassini's radar images prettier
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/26 02:12 CDT
One of the more exciting talks last week was given by Antoine Lucas about his work with Oded Aharonson "denoising" Cassini radar images of Titan. Cassini's radar images are superior to the camera photos in revealing fine details and topography on Titan's surface, but they do suffer from a random noise component that makes the pictures look snowy. Antoine and Oded have developed a method for removing much of this noise.
More radar images of icy moons from Cassini: Iapetus, Enceladus, and Rhea
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/21 12:10 CST
When I posted about the really cool Cassini SAR images of Enceladus a few weeks ago, I initially wrote that this was the first-ever SAR image of an icy moon other than Titan. Several people (some readers and two members of the Cassini science team!) corrected that statement: Cassini has performed SAR imaging of other icy moons (including Enceladus) before.
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.
Titan crater and programming note
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/09/02 11:58 CDT
Titan crater and programming note
Radar topographic view of a volcano
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/17 12:20 CST
Quick -- where is this? Is it one of Venus' iconic volcanoes? Or maybe Mars'?
2010 JL33: How to see an asteroid from quite a long way away
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/13 11:42 CST
A terrific set of Goldstone radar images of a good-sized near-Earth asteroids named 2010 JL33 was posted to the JPL website yesterday. They also posted a movie version but something about these pixelated radar image series absolutely begs for them to be displayed as an old-school animated GIF, so I made one.
Triple asteroid 1994 CC rotation animation
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2009/08/06 10:39 CDT
From the "just plain cool" department. I love animations of planetary images and I love radar images of asteroids -- so this animation is doubly cool.
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!
