April 25, 2017 On April 12, as the Sun was blocked by the disk of Saturn the Cassini spacecraft camera looked toward the inner Solar System and the gas giant’s backlit rings. At the top of the mosaicked view is the A ring with its broader Encke and narrower Keeler gaps visible. At the bottom […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA] How big is Jupiter’s moon Io? The most volcanic body in the Solar System, Io (usually pronounced “EYE-oh”) is 3,600 kilometers in diameter, about the size of planet Earth’s single large natural satellite. Gliding past Jupiter at the turn of the millennium, […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Apollo 15, USGS, NASA] On July 31, 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts Jim Iwrin and Dave Scott deployed the first Lunar Roving Vehicle on the Moon. Using it to explore their Hadley-Apennine landing site they spent nearly three days on the Moon while Al Worden orbited above. This digitally stitched […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Laurie Hatch] A Full Moon sets as the Solstice Sun rises in this June 20 dawn skyscape. Captured from a nearby peak in central California, planet Earth, the scene looks across the summit of Mount Hamilton and Lick Observatory domes on a calendar date that marks an astronomical change […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA / GSFC / Arizona State U. / Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Fifty years ago, Surveyor 1 reached the Moon. Launched on May 30, 1966 and landed on June 2, 1966 with the Moon at full phase it became the first U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on another […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State U./Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter] On the Moon, the Earth never rises — or sets. If you were to sit on the surface of the Moon, you would see the Earth just hang in the sky. This is because the Moon always keeps the same side toward the Earth. […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Michael Wilson] This was a sky to show the kids. All in all, three children, three planets, the Moon, a star, an airplane and a mom were all captured in one image near Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA in early September of 2005. Minus the airplane, this busy […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] On a hunch, photographer Laurene Morton drove to Dinosaur Hill Park in Pleasant Hill, California Sunday evening. Sure enough, “a huge crowd was waiting” for the clouds to clear and the total eclipse, on the moon’s closest pass to the Earth. “Everyone’s been talking about” the “Super Blood Moon,” […]
With the “blood moon” or total lunar eclipse expected to occur on Sept 28, the debate if the apocalyptic predictions that it is the end of the world would happen is once more resurrected barely three years after the Mayan calendar did. On one hand, NASA had issued a statement that the blood moon would […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Apollo 8, NASA What’s that rising over the edge of the Moon? Earth. About 47 years ago, in December of 1968, the Apollo 8 crew flew from the Earth to the Moon and back again. Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders were launched atop a Saturn V rocket […]
