See other posts from September 2012

A couple of gems from the archives

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2012/09/10 11:07 CDT

Topics: pretty pictures, amateur image processing, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Jupiter's moons, Europa, Saturn, Saturn's moons, Titan, Venus missions before 2000, NASA Mars missions before 1996, Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini

We still have a lot of work to do to migrate into our new website some of the great stuff we don't want to lose from our old website. This work is sometimes tedious, but this week, it's been really enjoyable, because I'm working on migrating some of the prettiest space images from our archives. Our old site's "image library" was entirely behind the scenes and invisible to the public; we didn't have a good way to feature such images independently of blog entries or web pages. One of the big changes I wanted in our new site was an independent Space Images section to highlight some of this great stuff. Here's just a few of the gems I've unearthed this week:

NASA / JPL / SSI / color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic

Jupiter and Europa from Cassini

This true-color image of a half-phase Europa poised above Jupiter's great red spot was taken by Cassini as it sailed past on January 2, 2001.

Ted Stryk

Venera 9's landing site

Venera 9 landed on October 22, 1975 and returned the first image from the surface of another planet. The terrain at Venera 9's landing site is blocky, unlike those observed by Venera 10, 13, and 14.

NASA / mosaic by Ted Stryk / annotations by Phil Stooke

Mariner 6 and 7 mosaic of Sinus Meridiani

This mosaic was lovingly constructed from Mariner 6 and 7 data by Ted Stryk. Most of the data is from Mariner 6; a small gore between two mosaics was filled in with some Mariner 7 data. The mosaics cover Sinus Meridiani, the location of the Opportunity landing site.

ESA / NASA / JPL / University of Arizona / René Pascal

70 kilometers above the surface of Titan

An artist's conception of Huygens' descent. At an altitude of 70 kilometers above the surface, Huygens is inside the layer of complex organic condensate haze. Below that layer, the view becomes clearer.

NASA / JPL / color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic

Voyager 1's departure shot of Saturn

Saturn was Voyager 1's last planetary encounter. It captured this iconic image of the ringed giant as it left the Saturn system at 21:15 UTC on December 15, 1980.

This is what keeps me going!