The Mariner Mars Globe

Posted 2013/11/29 12:04 CST | 3 comments

In 1971 I was being trained to work with the airbrush by the map artists at the U.S. Geological Survey's Branch of Astrogeologic Studies in Flagstaff. However, the project I ended up spending about a quarter of a man-year on was a hand-painted map globe of Mars.

Europa's Jupiter-facing hemisphere

Posted 2016/01/24 | 0 comments

This 12-frame mosaic provides the highest resolution view ever obtained of the side of Europa that faces Jupiter. It was obtained by the camera onboard NASA's Galileo spacecraft on November 25, 1999 during its 25th orbit of Jupiter at a distance of 94,000 kilometers. The highest resolution images are ~1 km/pixel. Lower resolution context was provided by images acquired during earlier Galileo orbits at resolutions of 7 and 13 kilometers. North is to the top of the picture and the sun illuminates the surface from the left. The image, centered at 0 latitude and 10 longitude, covers an area approximately 2,500 by 3,000 kilometers.

Sunset behind Gale's western rim, Curiosity sol 587

Posted 2014/04/14 | 0 comments

A blue halo surrounds the just-set Sun in this 6-image mosaic taken by Curiosity on sol 587 (April 1, 2014). The Sun has just set behind the tall western rim of Gale crater.

Spirit sunrise panorama at Troy

Posted 2014/01/14 | 0 comments

Spirit took this panorama on sol 1984 (August 2, 2009) at a local time of 7:00 a.m. The Sun had risen at 05:47. The originally black-and-white panorama has been hand-colored based on the colors from another, full-color panorama taken at a different time of day.