Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

According to a Chinese spaceflight forum, Chang'E program chief scientist Ouyang Ziyuan recently announced that Chang'E 2 has departed the Sun-Earth L2 point and is now en route to asteroid 4179 Toutatis!

Emily Lakdawalla

A notice of some new names for features on asteroid 2867 Steins inspired me to dig up the data set from the September 5, 2008 Rosetta flyby and explore it to see what it contained.

Emily Lakdawalla

Sky & Telescope and Replogle Globes teamed up to take advantage of the fabulous new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image mosaic of the Moon to make an equally fabulous new Moon globe.

Jay Pasachoff

A transit of Venus as seen from Jupiter may be observed by Hubble on September 20 and a transit of Venus as seen from Saturn will be observed by Cassini on December 21.

Mat Kaplan

Mat recalls stories from his many interactions with Ray Bradbury, and provides links to Ray's Planetary Radio episodes.

Jim Bell

Unless you are lucky and healthy enough to live for another 105 years, tomorrow will be your last chance to see a Venus transit from the surface of the Earth. But this need not be the last transit of Venus that you will ever see.

Emily Lakdawalla

A measurement of the Andromeda galaxy's proper motion shows it's coming directly at us, and will collide with the Milky Way in 4 billion years. The event will transform the appearance of our night sky.

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity strolled out of her winter haven this May to continue the expedition around Endeavour Crater, roving into yet another Martian spring.

Emily Lakdawalla

A solar eclipse isn't just a spiffy sight to Earthlings; it looks pretty cool to lunar dwellers as well.

David Shortt

The upcoming rare transit of Venus is one step in a long dance among Earth, Venus and the Sun. Transits of Venus follow a peculiar pattern—two transits 8 years apart, then 105.5 years with no transits, then two transits 8 years apart, then 121.5 years with no transits, for a total cycle of 243 years—and thereby hangs a tale.

Emily Lakdawalla

The apparently simple device of running Cassini images together like a flipbook makes for a dramatic movie, especially with the help of well-timed musical cues.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini obtained its first high-resolution images of Methone on May 20, 2012. Methone is one of the smallest regular moons of Saturn, having a diameter of only about 3 kilometers. It was the first moon that Cassini discovered, very early in Cassini's mission at Saturn, in 2004.

Emily Lakdawalla

Image magician Daniel Machacek has done it again, producing a jaw-dropping view of Mars from Viking Orbiter 1, featuring a frosty Argyre basin and stretching across to a series of faults called Thaumasia Fossae.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here's a neat video posted by SungrazerComets (the Twitter identity of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's Sungrazing Comets website) this morning.

Emily Lakdawalla

How to enjoy a solar eclipse with your kids, making shadow magic with a pinhole viewer.

David Kass

May 16, 2012 is the third martian anniversary of the start of Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) observations from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. MCS started measuring the atmosphere of Mars three Mars years ago, on September 24, 2006. We can now compare the weather and behavior of the atmosphere in three different years, and find the temperature differences to be surprisingly large.

Ray Sanders

This summer should provide great opportunities for stargazers to view planets, meteor showers, the transit of Venus, and for some, the annular solar eclipse. Check out these highlights of what you can look forward to this summer.

Bruce Betts

Evidence continues to pile up that the Rio Vichada structure in Colombia is indeed the largest impact structure in South America.

Ted Stryk

To celebrate ESA's selection of the JUICE mission to Jupiter, Ted Stryk produced a new global view of Europa from Galileo data.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini performed its last of three close encounters with Enceladus for 2012 two days ago, and followed the flyby with some spectacular images of Dione.