Articles

Jason Davis

Two short videos produced by Jason Davis on astronomy and planetary science work taking place at the University of Arizona.

Emily Lakdawalla

New ground-based images of Uranus show more finely detailed structure than any photos I have ever seen.

Emily Lakdawalla

A summary of just one talk from the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting, by Lindy Elkins-Tanton, which provided a neat explanation for how asteroids can be melted and layered on the inside yet have a primitive-looking exterior.

Bruce Betts

European astronomers have made the first planetary discovery in the closest-to-Earth Alpha Centauri star system. Here is some information about the discovery, and insights from Yale Astronomer Debra Fischer, who leads another Alpha Centauri planet search partially supported by The Planetary Society.

Emily Lakdawalla

Tuesday morning at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting featured talks on the surface composition and landforms on Titan, including lakes and

Emily Lakdawalla

In the first full day of the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, I listened to scientific sessions on icy worlds and on an exoplanet in a four-star system.

Emily Lakdawalla

I've just arrived in Reno, Nevada for the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. Here's an introduction and a few useful links; stay tuned the rest of the week for new science from all over the solar system and beyond.

Emily Lakdawalla

A Curiosity press briefing yesterday gave some of the first results from ChemCam and APXS on the rock

Emily Lakdawalla

I've been waiting for the publication of this book for years. Phil Stooke's International Atlas of Mars Exploration, just published by Cambridge University Press, is an exhaustively awesome labor of love, chronicling the first five decades of Mars exploration in pictures, maps, and facts.

Emily Lakdawalla

The landscapes that surround Curiosity are picture-postcard beautiful.

Daniel Fischer

Space blogger Daniel Fischer writes about the problem of composited astrophotos being distributed through social media channels by people unaware that they are artworks, not documentary photographs.

Emily Lakdawalla

A report in the Times of India states that India's Mars mission's main engine is now being tested.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's becoming a biweekly thing -- join me, Fraser Cain, and now Casey Dreier for an update on Curiosity and a chance for you to get your Curiosity questions answered! The Google+ Hangout is on Wednesday, October 10, at 16:00 PDT / 23:00 UTC.

Emily Lakdawalla

Curiosity shot a lovely panoramic view of the distant rim of Gale crater in the dramatic lighting of late afternoon on sol 49. Damien Bouic has colorized it, and it is beautiful.

Alex Parker

2011 HM102 is an L5 Neptune Trojan, trailing Neptune by approximately 60 degrees. This object was discovered in the search for a New Horizons post-Pluto encounter object in the Kuiper Belt.

Mat Kaplan

The newly-released eXtreme Deep Field takes us even further back into the history of our universe than the Ultra Deep Field or UDF.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's a quarterly feast day for me: the day that the Cassini mission delivers three months' worth of data to NASA's Planetary Data System. Here's a few images processed from the October 1, 2012 data release.

Jason Davis

SpaceX successfully sent their first paid Dragon capsule towards the International Space Station Sunday night. But the bigger story happened on the way to orbit.

Bruce Betts

Bruce Betts reports on the status of the current and future Mars program and on acronyms from a meeting of NASA's MEPAG (Mars Exploration Analysis Program Analysis Group).

Emily Lakdawalla

Yesterday, Deep Impact performed a trajectory correction maneuver, firing its thrusters to line up for a flyby seven years from now. Here's a preview of that encounter.