Blog Archive

The End of Cosmos 1, the Beginning of the Next Chapter

Posted by Louis D. Friedman on 2005/09/30 12:00 CDT

Another day, another natural disaster on Earth seen from space...

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/09/29 08:14 CDT

...but this one is much closer to home than Katrina and Rita were.

An opportunity for Spirit to see Earth and Venus together?

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/09/26 08:16 CDT

I received the following question by email last week: "Do you know if the Mars rovers team has any plans to photograph Venus and Earth together in the evening sky from either rover site? They will be closest together around Sept. 29th."

An official pronouncement may be coming about the "what is a planet?" debate

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/09/21 02:28 CDT

Since the discovery of 2003 UB313, larger than Pluto, there's been a lively debate going on in many places about what makes a planet. There's now an article in Nature talking about a proposal that would address the controversy

A debate about time

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/09/21 08:21 CDT

I received a press release in my inbox this morning that made me think. It came from the Royal Astronomical Society, and was titled "RAS Statement on Proposed Abolition of Leap Seconds."

An animation of Itokawa from Hayabusa

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/09/07 01:45 CDT

This lovely animation of Itokawa represents 20 individual images taken between 18:10 on September 5 and 00:30 on September 6, from a distance of less than 700 kilometers away.

A new view of Pandora

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/09/07 12:54 CDT