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15 January 2009
A Commercial Pancam Spinoff?
Ever wish you could make a stunning panorama like the rovers do? Apparently now you can! A friend of mine just sent me a link to GigaPan systems, who are selling a beta version of a robotic tripod and software for making panoramic images. I love NASA spinoffs! From the site: The GigaPan Imager uses the same panoramic photo technology as the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, used to …
14 January 2009
Earth, Observed
A lot of people don’t realize that NASA studies the Earth as well as the rest of the universe. Sure, pictures from Hubble and Cassini and the Mars Rovers are spectacular, but there are some great views of our own planet too, many of which are available at NASA’s Earth Observatory site. Today the Big Picture has a selection of some of the best photos of Earth from NASA’s collections. …
12 January 2009
Colonizing Earth
The other day I helped a race of hideous spiderlike aliens colonize Antarctica. I’ve posted about the game Spore before, but the basic idea is that you begin as a protozoan in the primordial ooze and work your way up through various stages of evolution until you become a space-faring civilization capable of colonizing other worlds, terraforming them, and populating them with plants and animals of your choosing (or even …
8 January 2009
Early Birthday Present from Opportunity
The Opportunity rover will be celebrating its 5th birthday on Mars later this month, but as an early treat a shiny new panorama was just released. This panorama was taken in late November while the sun was between Mars and the Earth, cutting off communications. It shows the beautiful layered bedrock and undulating ripples that Opportunity is studying on its way to the giant crater Endeavor. Click the images below …
11 December 2008
Mars in 3D
Apparently the folks on the HiRISE team decided that spectacular images weren’t enough. They have now released hundreds of 3D HiRISE images on their website, including the one above of layered rocks and sand dunes in Arabia Terra. (you may recognize this scene from my Mars Art post a few weeks ago) Grab your 3D glasses and enjoy!
1 December 2008
Hubble Advent Calendar
I am back from Thanksgiving-related travels but am going to be quite busy this month, preparing for a conference, finishing the semester, and getting caught up now that National Novel Writing Month is over, so posting may be a little light. For now, take a look over at The Big Picture. They are doing an advent calendar of Hubble images, unveiling a new image every day from now until Christmas.
24 November 2008
Mars Art: Dunes in Abalos Undae
This week’s Mars Art is a HiRISE view of Dunes in Abalos Undae. Pictures of sand dunes taken by HiRISE never get old for me. There is something about the undulating, regular shapes of dunes that is fascinating and beautiful and peaceful. There is a great quote about dunes in the book “Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes” by R.A. Bagnold that goes on quite poetically about them, but …
23 November 2008
More About Mars Glaciers
I posted previously about the announcement that buried glaciers had been discovered on Mars, but now I’ve had time to actually take a look at the article in Science. The important point of the article is not that these formations were discovered (we’ve actually known about them for some time) but that, using radar on the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, scientists were able to penetrate the surface of these mysterious glacier-looking …
15 November 2008
Mars Art: Something Old, Something New
I love this image. It is a view from the Mars Orbital Camera (MOC) showing layered rocks and dunes in the bottom of an unnamed crater in Arabia Terra, Mars. The rocks are extremely ancient sediments, laid down billions of years ago when the planet was young. One of the most impressive things to me is how nice and regular the layers are. The black dunes and the granule ripples …
14 November 2008
Lidless and Wreathed in Flame
I just had an outrageously geeky moment, and needed to share. I think there is something that the Hubble team isn’t telling us about their latest planet-discovery image… Masked image of Fomalhaut and its planet Fomalhaut-b. The Eye of Sauron.
