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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Possibly the best view of the Great Red Spot ever
This is a new, big mosaic of Voyager 1 images, this time showing the Great Red Spot at high resolution.
Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit Hibernates Still, Opportunity Pulls into Cambridge Bay
With the Sun beginning to warm the landscape in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet and winds whipping up here and there forming dust devils that kick the powdery, rust-colored topsoil into the atmosphere, the Mars Exploration Rovers have been experiencing sure signs of a Martian spring this month.
What's up in the solar system in September 2010
This month there will be approximately a hundred different planetary science meetings (a list of which is at the end of this post).
Successor to Mars Climate Orbiter will fly aboard ExoMars
Congratulations to the Mars Climate Sounder team on winning a spot for a successor instrument aboard the next Mars orbiter, the joint NASA-ESA ExoMars, set to launch in 2016.
New Flickr collection of historical NASA photos
NASA announced today that they had placed several new sets of historical photos on their
The Potential to Destroy Civilization? Now on YouTube
Visualization can help the brain comprehend what words and numbers can struggle to covey. There's a YouTube video posted by
Bringing MOLA altimetry tracks into Google Mars
I've had a fun morning of noodling around learning how to write KML files, and have produced one for Google Mars that shows you all of the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter tracks that cross the area Opportunity has driven through already, as well as the area of Endeavour crater.
From the Ground and from Space, New Planetary Systems Unveiled
Two nearly simultaneous announcements by scientists that they have detected entire planetary system deep in space have set the astronomical community abuzz.
Review: Phil Plait's Bad Universe, new series on Discovery
I got an advance copy of the first episode of
Jupiter's swirling storms from Voyager 1
Amateur image mage Björn Jónsson has recently turned his attention back to Voyager 1's close-up images of Jupiter.
Tracing the Big Picture of Mars' Atmosphere
One of the instruments on a 2016 mission to orbit Mars will provide daily maps of global, pole-to-pole, vertical distributions of the temperature, dust, water vapor and ice clouds in the Martian atmosphere.
A first look at distant hills
Rover fans have been excitedly watching the hills on Opportunity's horizon grow taller and taller as Opportunity rolls toward its destination, Endeavour crater.
The August 20, 2010 Jupiter fireball -- and the March 5, 1979 one
Following up on the story I first posted on August 22, the Jupiter impact fireball first noticed by Japanese amateur astronomer Masayuki Tachikawa has been independently confirmed by two other Japanese astronomers.
A space calendar in "the cloud"
I've spent today fiddling around with Google Calendar and have created a wholly new calendar of space events for the blog.
Yet another Jupiter impact!? August 20, seen from Japan
This may be a very common event after all: another optical flash has been observed on Jupiter, again from an observer far east of the Greenwich meridian, though it was not Anthony Wesley (for once).
Three things to watch
It's high summer (in the northern hemisphere anyway) and many of you may be seeking shelter from the heat. If you need to collapse on the couch and watch TV, I have three space-y recommendations for you.
Exposing Io's true colors
Thanks to its active volcanic activity and sulfur-rich surface, Io is one of the most colorful worlds yet seen in the Solar System, save the Earth of course
Review: "The Complete Sky & Telescope: Seven Decade Collection"
Sky & Telescope has just issued a set of 10 DVDs that contain every issue of the magazine published from the premier issue in November 1941 through December 2009, chronicling seven decades of scientific discovery and, of course, the entirety of the Space Age.
The edge of "round": Three half-megameter moons
Part of the definition of a planet is a solar system body's roundness.
MESSENGER: A snapshot of home
MESSENGER is in a unique position in the solar system, orbiting the Sun well within the orbit of Venus. From there, it can gaze outward from the Sun to search for tiny objects that may possibly be traveling in the same region, called vulcanoids.



Sun
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Small Bodies