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Opportunity on the move

Opportunity rover is driving, driving, driving. It departed the meteorite named Block Island on sol 2,004 and has routinely clocked 70 meters per driving day (with drives every other day).

Beautiful 3D animation of Spirit's environs in Gusev Crater

Doug Ellison has done it again: he's created a spectacular overflight of Gusev crater based upon digital elevation models of the terrain produced by the United States Geological Survey from HiRISE data.

Opportunity's highway, and a tour of Block Island

Just a cool image to start the morning: after a 70-meter drive yesterday, Opportunity's following not one but two sets of its own tracks.

Necho crater detail: albedo pattern on wall (contrast enhanced)

Interpreting a crater on the Moon

The images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera or LROC are absolutely stunning.

Spirit at Home Plate, July 16, 2009 (sol 1,968)

New HiRISE image of Spirit at Home Plate

There's a lovely new color HiRISE image of Spirit at Home Plate. It was captured on July 16 (sol 1,968), and Spirit is firmly entrenched at Troy, on the western side of Home Plate.

A sunset into the dust

While Spirit has been stuck at Troy, it's been taking numerous opportunities to capture photos with dramatic twilight lighting. On sol 2,002 (three sols ago, or August 21), it gazed toward the setting Sun, snapping the shutter roughly once a minute.

Opportunity from HiRISE, sol 1,949 (July 19, 2009)

New image of Opportunity on Mars

I really can't explain why it didn't occur to me to search for the rover in the image of Victoria crater released by the HiRISE team on Wednesday.

Oblique view of Victoria crater from HiRISE

Mars eye candy: New oblique view of Victoria crater

Today the HiRISE team released a lovely new view of Victoria crater, taken nearly a year after the Opportunity rover departed it.

Triple asteroid 1994 CC rotation animation

From the

Cassini RADAR continues to gaze at Titan

The Cassini spacecraft made its 59th flyby of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, on Friday, July 24, and in the last few hours we have received images from the RADAR instrument in SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) mode.

Gravity's Bow

Timothy Reed explains how optical telescopes are tested for gravity sag, and the methods used to counteract or compensate for it.

Canto III: Hints of Equinox

Saturn is rapidly approaching equinox, where the Sun passes through the ring plane (south-to-north, i.e. the northern vernal equinox), and its ring system (i.e. its great now-gloomy poorly-lit circles of large blocks of water ice) is starting to show some really interesting behavior.