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Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Amazing Hayabusa images
These photos pretty much speak for themselves. They are amazing. Hayabusa saw its own shadow on Itokawa, and took a photo of the released target marker.
The Planetary Society and the Search for Extrasolar Planets
Almost since it was founded in 1980, The Planetary Society has been there for the search for other worlds.
A way-cool Cassini picture: rings, Titan, Dione, Prometheus
I just noticed this picture on the Cassini raw images website. I love these
Animation from Cassini's approach to Dione
The images from Cassini's Dione encounter yesterday have started coming back, and there is a really cool set of 16 pictures of Dione and Rhea.
Dione encounter today
Cassini is already on its way in to a close, 500-kilometer encounter with Dione -- it's less than four hours away now, at 17:52 UTC.
Hyperion in color
Here is a gorgeous color mosaic of Hyperion assembled by amateur image processor Mattias Malmer from images from the recent flyby.
A new Cassini data release to the Planetary Data System
Yesterday, this quarter's release of Cassini data showed up at the Planetary Data System (PDS). The PDS is the public repository for all of NASA's data.
A piece of a new picture from Hayabusa
The Hayabusa mission has proven to be a bit of a tease -- they were releasing lots of images to the public as they approached asteroid Itokawa, but once they arrived, the image releases shut down entirely. There is finally a little postage stamp of an image captured by Hayabusa at
Amazing views of Hyperion
I've finally worked my way through all of the Hyperion images that were returned from the last flyby. It's a wonderful data set.
Another day, another natural disaster on Earth seen from space...
...but this one is much closer to home than Katrina and Rita were.
DPS: Central transit of Earth as seen from Saturn
There were a few talks at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting dealing with a rare and fortuitous event that happened on January 13, 2005.
An animation of Itokawa from Hayabusa
This lovely animation of Itokawa represents 20 individual images taken between 18:10 on September 5 and 00:30 on September 6, from a distance of less than 700 kilometers away.
Images from the August 2, 2005 MESSENGER Flyby of Earth
On August 2, 2005, MESSENGER flew by Earth at an altitude of a mere 2,347 kilometers above Mongolia.
A couple of pretty Cassini photos from this week
First, here's a nice shot of Epimetheus, which was taken about a month ago.
A little more Hyperion
Checking the Cassini raw images website, I found quite a few more images of Hyperion this morning. It looks like Cassini had a leisurely flyby of the little moon from roughly 700,000 kilometers' distance.
A photo of MESSENGER
I was browsing the MESSENGER website just now, and found a neat photo. It's a picture of MESSENGER as seen from Earth when it flew by yesterday.
A couple cool raw Cassini pics -- and a break in the data
I monitor the Cassini website to keep my eye out for cool pictures, and it's usually relatively easy to figure out what the spacecraft is looking at (rings, moon, Saturn, whatever). Sometimes, though, the images can be very confusing.