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13 November 2008
Extrasolar Planets Imaged by Hubble and Gemini!
There was a big announcement today: the Hubble space telescope has taken an image of a planet orbiting the bright star Fomalhaut! And not only that, the Gemini telescope has taken an image of TWO planets orbiting the star HR8799! Phil Plait has a nice and very excited post about this over at bad astronomy. You can also go straight to the source and read the JPL press release. I’ll …
Tectonics on Mars
Mars is often touted as the “most earth-like” planet, but if you take a look at its surface there are some aspects that are decidedly alien. Sure, there are dry river beds and canyons and volcanoes. But there are also craters. Everywhere. So many that, when Mariner 9 sent back the first spacecraft images of Mars, people were dismayed to see a surface that looked just like the moon! Is …
10 November 2008
Mars Art Galleries!
Apparently I am not the only person who has had the idea of posting “artistic” images of Mars! In the past week I’ve come across two sites with collections of Mars Art images. So in lieu of posting my own image this week, I’ll point you to these sites who had the idea before me! First is a site by Jim Plaxco called simply the Mars Art Gallery. It has …
5 November 2008
Second Enceladus "Skeet Shoot" Successful
On Halloween, Cassini flew by the south pole of Enceladus again, and snapped some stunning high-resolution photos from an altitude of ~1,700 km. To give you an idea of the resolution, here’s a comparison. First, a view of Enceladus from the recent flyby with a resolution of about 12 meters (40 feet) per pixel. Next, a view of the earth at a comparable scale. It’s a Landsat 7 image, so …
2 November 2008
Mars Art: Dust Devil Tracks
In this scene, taken by the Mars Orbital Camera (MOC) on Mars Global Surveyor, dust devils have swirled and gyrated back and forth, lifting the bright dust off of the surface and leaving complicated dark-toned streaks. There are many more examples of this, including some where the dust devils have been caught in the act! I’m posting this as Mars Art because it looks for all the world to me …
1 November 2008
Mercury in Color
Check out this true color and exaggerated color view of Mercury, taken by MESSENGER during the recent flyby! In one of my classes on Thursday, we were speculating about why Mercury craters seem to have such long rays on the fresh craters. Our conclusion was that it’s probably just the higher gravity. Mercury is small but very dense, so it’s surface gravity is greater than the moon’s. So with equivalent …
28 October 2008
Mars Art: Linear Dunes near the North Pole
I am starting a new thing. Every week, I will browse through data from current and past Mars missions and find an “artistic” image to post here. I’ll talk briefly about what the image says scientifically, but mostly this is about eye-candy and the crossover between science and art, which I have talked about before. Without further ado, here’s your first piece of “Mars Art”: This image is a HiRISE …
24 October 2008
Big Picture: Enceladus
Check it out, The Big Picture is featuring views of Saturn’s moon Enceladus today! I have a soft spot for Enceladus because when I was in NASA academy, we chose to come up with a mission concept to Enceladus. Go check out the stunning photos!
21 October 2008
Massive Crystals: The coolest thing I've ever seen.
Really, that’s all I said for like 5 minutes after seeing this picture for the first time: Those are PEOPLE, for scale. Here’s another pic, just to put you in a little more awe: These are the largest crystals yet to be found on Earth, with some reaching over 30 feet in length! As reported in NG, The Cueva de los Cristales is located 1000 feet below ground in the …
Fresh Craters
Today marks my twenty-fourth revolution around the sun! To commemorate this momentous occasion, I am going to be a lazy blogger and just let you drool over some HiRISE images instead. The image above is a small crater in the polar layered deposits. It’s filled with ice because the crater walls keep the floor shaded, so frost can collect there. You can read more about this crater at the HiRISE …
