See other posts from June 2013

Favorite space images: "Many Worlds"

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2013/06/17 10:58 CDT

Topics: mission status, many worlds, Planetary Radio

For this evening's Planetary Radio Live event, Mat Kaplan asked me to do a presentation of some favorite space images. I told him that picking favorite space images is like picking favorite children; it's not possible because they're all my favorite. To narrow things down, I decided to explore a theme. In my big space images library I have a special tag that I use for when a photo contains more than one planetary body: "Many Worlds." You can view all the images in the library that have the Many Worlds tag; below is the list of photos I showed in my talk.

• Planets over Cumbria
• 2010 Total Solar Eclipse
• Birth of a New Moon
• Galileo view of an Earth-Moon conjunction
• The Moon transiting Earth, as seen from Deep Impact (animation)
• Transit of Deimos, Curiosity sol 42
• Phobos over Mars from Phobos 2
• Phobos and Jupiter
• High-resolution Voyager 1 view of Jupiter with Io and Europa
• Jupiter and Europa from Cassini
• Io and Europa from New Horizons (Emily Lakdawalla's version)
• Ida and Dactyl in enhanced color
• Lutetia and Saturn, in color
• Saturn family portrait (taken 20 months before Cassini orbit insertion)
• Rhea, ring shadows, and moon shadows on Saturn
• Mimas above the Rings
• Dione and Saturn, May 2, 2012
• Mimas setting
• Titan and Rhea
• Titan, Dione, Pan, and Pandora
• Dione in front of ringmoons
• A gaggle of moons
• The Solar System Family Portrait
• MESSENGER's solar system family portrait

NASA / JPL / SSI / mosaic by Emily Lakdawalla

Dione in front of ringmoons

Cassini captured the images for this mosaic on December 12, 2011. The five images used in this mosaic were taken sequentially, and the background moons shifted positions between frames; this composition does not actually reflect a confluence of moons that happened at one distinct moment in time. From left to right, the ringmoons are Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Pandora.

ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Phobos and Jupiter

On June 1, 2001, Mars Express watched as Phobos (the inner and larger of Mars' two moons) slipped past distant Jupiter. Phobos is only 23 kilometers in diameter, while Jupiter is 142,000 kilometers across! The image has been rotated from the original so that the south pole of Phobos is down. Stickney crater takes a bite out of the moon to the left.