Mars, Earth, and the Sun [were to have aligned last night], a rare ‘opposition of the planets’ that only happens once every 778 days. But what makes this so remarkable is that it comes precisely a week before everyone on earth will see the first of FOUR dark red ‘blood moons’, an extraordinary event some […]
“Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, if the first segment is any indication, will attempt to package unconditional blind faith in evolution as scientific literacy in an effort to create interest in science,” wrote a blogger for Answers in Genesis, a Christian apologetics ministry that promotes the view that the universe, our planet, and its inhabitants came […]
What created this unusual hole in Mars? The hole was discovered by chance in 2011 on images of the dusty slopes of Mars’ Pavonis Mons volcano taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently circling Mars. The hole appears to be an opening to an underground cavern, partly illuminated on […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Texas A&M, Cornell, JPL, NASA] What would it be like to see a sunset on Mars? To help find out, the robotic rover Spirit was deployed in 2005 to park and watch the Sun dip serenely below the distant lip of Gusev crater. … Fine […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA If this is Saturn, where are the rings? When Saturn’s “appendages” disappeared in 1612, Galileo did not understand why. Later that century, it became understood that Saturn’s unusual protrusions were rings and that when the Earth crosses the ring plane, the edge-on […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS; Digital processing: Damia Bouic] Landing in mid-2012, the Curiosity rover is searching for clues of whether life could ever have existed on the red planet [and has found] evidence for an ancient (but now dried) freshwater lake…. To continue its investigation, the car-sized rover is […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars has captured its first view of Earth from the surface of the Red Planet — a striking image that shows our home planet as a bright light in the Martian sky, with the moon shining nearby. The rover apparently watched the Martian sunset, then photographed Earth in the night sky […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Cornell, JPL, NASA] What if a rock that looked like a jelly donut suddenly appeared on Mars? That’s just what happened in front of the robotic Opportunity rover currently exploring the red planet. The unexpectedly placed rock, pictured above, was imaged recently by Opportunity after […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA, JPL – Processed Image Copyright: Ted Stryk] Despina is a tiny moon of Neptune … discovered in 1989, in images from the Voyager 2 spacecraft taken during its encounter with the solar system’s most distant gas giant planet. But looking through the Voyager 2 data 20 years later, […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] / Copyright: Leo Aerts This webcam and telescope image of banded gas giant Jupiter shows the transit of three shadows cast by Jupiter’s moons in progress, captured in Belgian skies on Oct. 12 at 0528 UT. Such a three shadow transit is a relatively rare event, even for a […]
