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Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
New Horizons Day 2: Liquids on Pluto's surface?
Jeff Moore's presentation was cool because of the discussion it stimulated. He considered what exogenic processes might be operating on Pluto's surface. What's an exogenic process? It's something that modifies the shape of the surface from the outside, and doesn't require the body to be geologically active inside.
New Horizons Day 2: Tectonic features on icy worlds
The second day of the New Horizons Workshop on Icy Surface Processes was about geology and geophysics. This long post just covers the first talk of that day.
New Horizons workshop, day 1: Chemistry & climate on Pluto & other cold places
Today and tomorrow I'm attending the New Horizons Workshop on Icy Surface Processes. The first day was all about the composition of the surface and atmosphere of Pluto, Charon, Triton, and other distant places.
Meeting today: The infelicitously named "SBAG"
NASA funds regular meetings of scientists who work on different parts of the solar system to provide scientific input into NASA's future plans. These
Shoemaker NEO Grant Update: Asteroid discoveries from La Sagra
In spite of some bad weather conditions during the first part of this year, the new camera bought with funds from a Planetary Society Shoemaker Near Earth Object grant helped us to discover and confirm ten new near-Earth objects.
Vesta's wacky craters
Dawn's images of Vesta show craters upon craters, but the longer I study the images, the wackier the craters look.
In their own words
While doing my daily reading today I was struck by the awesomeness of two recent blog posts. Both were composed not by professional bloggers like me but by professional space explorers, one a scientist and the other an engineer.
Comet Garradd in 3D (sort of)
Amateur astronomer Patrick Wiggins sent me this neat little animation of comet Garradd moving against background stars through an hour's worth of observing. I'm not any kind of astronomer but if I were I think I would get a kick out of looking at things that appear to move within one night of watching -- asteroids, comets, Jupiter's spots. I'm impatient that way.
Vesta, a revelation
I have to admit it: three months ago I did not understand why space science is important. This is a pretty bold statement coming from a practicing aerospace engineer, but recent events have corrected this lack of understanding, and I am not embarrassed to correct myself in this blog. But let us not get ahead of the story.
On speculation in today's Dawn press briefing
When a spacecraft has visited a new body for the first time, the usual answer to any scientific question is
What I see in the first high-res Dawn images of Vesta
I had to wait until the kids were in bed and the husband fed last night before I finally had time to sit down and really look at the Dawn images of Vesta. And I still hardly knew where to begin. This brand new world is just so different than others I've seen.
Fabulous Dawn Vesta images and rotation movie!!
Now that Dawn's close enough to Vesta, we're seeing absolutely spectacular detail and tremendous diversity across Vesta's surface. As usual it'll probably take me a while to bring together all the new information, so as a stopgap I'm going to post an awesome image and a rotation movie.
A different face of Vesta (oh, *there's* the craters!)
Here's the latest image release from Dawn at Vesta, taken from an altitude about twice as high as that of their first mapping orbit.
Dawn Journal: Dawn has arrived!
After covering 2.8 billion kilometers (1.7 billion miles) on its own, after traveling for nearly four years through the lonely emptiness of interplanetary space, after being bound by the gravity only of the sun, Dawn is finally in orbit around Vesta.
Vesta does a Hyperion impression
Maybe it's my own peculiar variant of pareidolia, but every time I see a new image of Vesta I'm reminded of some different other lumpy body in the solar system. In the image released just now by the Dawn team, taken from 10,500 kilometers away, I'm seeing Hyperion.
A fourth moon for Pluto
That's right: Hubble observations have yielded the discovery of a third small body orbiting Pluto and Charon.
Vesta in infrared color!
Yet another sharp-eyed reader (I love my readers!) pointed out to me that the German-language release on the MPS website about the latest Vesta image from Dawn included what looked like a tiny thumbnail of a color view.
Yet another new image of Vesta
A sharp-eyed reader noticed that a size comparison montage posted by the Dawn mission today included an image of Vesta that had not yet been released separately to the public, and it is a very cool one.
Congratulations to the Dawn team on their orbit entry & pretty pictures!
There's a new orbital mission on the map! As of Friday, the relatively small mass of the asteroid Vesta has finally taken hold of its new artificial satellite, Dawn.
Origins 2011 conference, part 1
The Origins 2011 conference, which took place last week in Montpellier, France, was dedicated to the origins of life and its occurrence in the universe. At this meeting, scientists from very different disciplines came together to share their ideas.