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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.
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