Articles

Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.

Uranus and Challenger

In the past week there have been 25th anniversaries of two events in 1986, one great, one terrible: the closest approach of Voyager 2 to Uranus on January 24, and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger upon liftoff on January 28.

Butterfly crater on Mars

I've spent the day noodling around in the current issue of Icarus, following up some of the more interesting stories within its table of contents, and came across a picture of this very cool crater -- actually, set of craters -- on Mars.

How HRSC's five panchromatic channels view Phobos

Animation of Phobos rotating from recent Mars Express flyby images

Daniel Macháček has colorized some terrific images of Phobos and run them through some morphing software to make a seamless animation that appears to show Phobos rotating before you.

Mars Express' January 2011 Phobos images show how camera works

The Mars Express High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) team has just released several images from the most recent series of Phobos flybys to the Mars Express blog.

Two fine color Cassini animations: Prometheus rotating, Tethys and Dione dancing

Daniel Macháček has reached into the dark side of Prometheus and pulled out an incredible amount of detail where the potato-shaped moon is illuminated by Saturnshine. He produced an animation that morphs among the three sets of four-filter color images that Cassini snapped during the flyby.

2010 JL33 seen by Goldstone radio telescope

2010 JL33: How to see an asteroid from quite a long way away

A terrific set of Goldstone radar images of a good-sized near-Earth asteroids named 2010 JL33 was posted to the JPL website yesterday. They also posted a movie version but something about these pixelated radar image series absolutely begs for them to be displayed as an old-school animated GIF, so I made one.

Goodies from the January 11 Rhea flyby

Cassini got some incredibly tricky shots during its January 11 Rhea flyby!

Solar eclipses from space: Hinode and SDO

Two spacecraft that keep their ever-watchful eyes on the Sun -- NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and JAXA's Hinode -- were doing their thing, when something large wandered past: the Moon.

Sunset and eclipse on Mars

These two movies were posted to the JPL website a couple of weeks ago, and they are just amazing.

Happy 2011, and an end to the 2010 advent calendar

Welcome 2011! I can't wait for what this year has in store. The prize for all of you who have enjoyed opening each door in the Planetary Society's 2010 advent calendar is one of the best views we can get of one of the biggest objects in the asteroid belt, Vesta.

Door 31 in the 2010 advent calendar

Time to open the thirty-first (and next-to-last) door in the advent calendar. Where in the solar system are these dark-rimmed craters?

Bye bye, Kodachrome, but "Kodak moments" will live on in space

This week is the end for Kodachrome film. It's a casualty of the digital revolution.

Door 30 in the 2010 advent calendar

Time to open the thirtieth door in the advent calendar. Where in the solar system is this ridged crater?

The Year in Pictures: 2010

I've just posted my annual roundup of significant images from planetary exploration in 2010.

Door 29 in the 2010 advent calendar

Time to open the twenty-ninth door in the advent calendar. Where in the solar system is this fractured flowing ice?

SOHO's 2000th comet

SOHO was launched more than 15 years ago to study the Sun, primarily; but a side benefit of its constant observation of the Sun has been its ability to notice

All asteroids and comets visited by spacecraft as of August 2014, in color, albedo linearly scaled

365 Days of Astronomy Podcast: Small Worlds

Today the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast aired my contribution, Small Worlds, about the smaller denizens of the solar system visited in the past year, and due to be visited in the next.