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365 Days of Astronomy Podcast: What's up in the second quarter of 2011
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/04/07 11:16 CDT
Regular readers of this blog will find the content of today's 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast familiar, because it's an update on what the solar system exploration spacecraft are up to, based on my monthly "what's up" updates.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/03/22 04:40 CDT
Last week, Zibi Turtle and Jason Perry and a dozen other coauthors published a paper in Science discussing evidence for rain on Titan.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/03/17 06:15 CDT
As I wait for the MESSENGER Mercury Orbit Insertion webcast to start, I thought I'd fiddle with some images to point out that Mercury is a bridge between the scales of planets and the scales of moons.
LPSC 2011: Wanted: Pioneer 10 & 11 digital data
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/03/11 01:39 CST
This is both a Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) update and a public service announcement. Ted Stryk has been working for years to locate the original Pioneer 10 and 11 image data from the Jupiter and Saturn encounters.
Posted by Emily Martin on 2010/08/16 01:42 CDT
In response to Emily's entry about finally getting her hands on a subscription to the planetary science journal Icarus, I thought I would report on an article from the most recent issue: Geology of the Selk crater region on Titan from Cassini VIMS observations, by Jason Soderblom and 11 other scientists.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/05/11 04:53 CDT
Wow, this is a cool paper. Here's the gist: the Cassini RADAR team has spotted some river channels on Titan that shine so brightly in radar images, there must be something special going on to explain that brightness.
Titan and Dione: The same, but different
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/04/22 05:29 CDT
Here's a new lovely color composition of Titan and Dione captured by Cassini. This one was taken on April 20, 2010; a set of 15 raw images taken of the two moons just showed up on the Cassini raw images website.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/04/19 03:35 CDT
Usually I like Mondays, but today I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. When I get overwhelmed, I look at pictures from Cassini.
Cassini VIMS sees the long-awaited glint off a Titan lake
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2009/12/17 04:28 CST
The Cassini mission announced today the first observation of a specular reflection off of a lake on Titan. A specular reflection is a mirror-like flash, and you only get one when you have a mirror-like surface -- very, very smooth.
Changes in Titan's southern lakes
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2009/10/06 05:19 CDT
Today's science press release out of the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting concerns changes in lakes near Titan's south pole observed during Cassini's mission. In brief, repeat Cassini RADAR observations of the same spots during different Titan flybys turned up places where there appeared to be dark lakes in earlier images and dry lakes in later images.
Cassini RADAR continues to gaze at Titan
Posted by Jani Radebaugh on 2009/07/27 07:08 CDT
The Cassini spacecraft made its 59th flyby of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, on Friday, July 24, and in the last few hours we have received images from the RADAR instrument in SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) mode.
Posted by John Smith on 2009/06/07 12:01 CDT
Each Titan flyby is not a fork in the road, but rather a Los Angeles style cloverleaf in terms of the dizzying number of possible destinations. So how did our current and future plans for the path of the Cassini spacecraft come to be? That's the question Dave Seal put to me since that's my job -- I am a tour designer.
Canto II: Titan's Atmosphere and the Solar Cycle
Posted by David Seal on 2009/06/03 04:44 CDT
David Seal explains the complications for Cassini coming from Titan's atmosphere and Solar Cycle.
Posted by David Seal on 2009/06/02 01:58 CDT
David Seal muses on his time as the mission planner for Cassini, and the history behind its name, and astronomy in Rome.
DPS meeting: Sunday: Lakes on Titan
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/10/15 03:52 CDT
This time around DPS features three separate oral sessions on Titan, indicating just how much attention that moon is getting from the scientific community right now. From the first session, on Titan's lower atmosphere, I'm just covering the two talks on Titan's lakes.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/07/30 07:02 CDT
A press release from the Cassini VIMS team today is titled "NASA Confirms Liquid Lake on Saturn Moon." This may be making some of you ask: but wait, haven't they already proven there's liquid lakes on Titan?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/03/25 12:37 CDT
I thought that today's image release from the Cassini imaging team was exceptionally pretty.
LPSC: Thursday: Rovers, Titan, Mars, Venus Express, Neptune
Posted by Ted Stryk on 2008/03/14 03:49 CDT
I spent a large portion of the day at the Lunar and Planetary Institute's library and presented my own poster during the poster sessions, so my coverage of Thursday's sessions is limited.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/02/19 04:40 CST
There was a press release from the Cassini mission today about a pile of papers (14 of them!) being published in the journal Icarus about Saturn's icy moons. I haven't had time to read more than the overview article yet, but I wanted to come up with a graphic for an overview of Saturn's moons, and I couldn't resist delving into the massive database of Cassini images to produce something new
Titan's south pole looks pretty dry
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/01/11 04:31 CST
One of the major results from the Cassini mission last year was the production of a mosaic of images from its RADAR instrument covering Titan's north pole. Titan's north pole has lakes upon lakes, some big, some small, but everywhere you look, there they are.
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