[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)] Planet Earth’s horizon stretches across this recent Solar System group portrait, seen from the southern hemisphere’s Las Campanas Observatory. Taken before dawn it traces the ecliptic with a line-up familiar to November’s early morning risers. Toward the east are bright planets Venus, […]
[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 […]
In its final farewell to Pluto, New Horizons … [sent] an image of exotic ice across the dwarf planet’s surface, revealing signs of recent geologic activity — something scientists hoped to find but didn’t expect. ‘We’ve only seen surfaces like this on active worlds like Earth and Mars,’ said mission co-investigator John Spencer of SwRI. […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ. / APL, Southwest Research Inst. A 50 mile (80 kilometer) trip across Pluto would cover the distance indicated by the scale bar/ The close-up of the icy world’s rugged equatorial terrain was captured when the New Horizons spacecraft was about 47,800 miles (77,000 kilometers) […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION], Ben Cooper Destination: Pluto. The New Horizons spacecraft [atop a powerful Atlas V rocket] roared off its launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA in 2006 toward adventures in the distant Solar System. The craft is the fastest spaceships ever launched by humans, having passed the Moon only […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] There’s a near-perfect heart shape on Pluto’s rusty red surface which scientists are seeing for the first time as a piano-sized NASA spacecraft, New Horizons, hurtles toward the distant body on its way toward a historic flyby on July 14. … Pluto [was] once considered the farthest planet in […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute] [This is] Dione, and it’s a moon of Saturn. The robotic Cassini spacecraft took the featured image during a flyby of Saturn’s cratered Moon last month. Perhaps what makes this image so interesting, though, is the background. First, the large orb looming behind Dione […]
Kelly Beatty, Sky and Telescope The two brightest planets are gliding closer together in the early evening sky, and their celestial dance culminates with an ultra-close pairing on June 30th. Anyone who pays even cursory attention to the evening sky has surely noticed that the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, have been drawing closer […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / NASA, JPL-Caltech; Mosaic Processing: Marco Di Lorenzo, Kenneth Kremer] Shortly before Mars’ June 2015 conjunction, the Curiosity Rover celebrated 1000 sols on the red planet. After its Aug. 5, 2012 landing, Curiosity’s 1000th sol or martian day on the surface corresponded to planet Earth’s calendar date May 31, […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Damian Peach/SEN] In this sharp snapshot, the Solar System’s largest moon Ganymede poses next to Jupiter, the largest planet. Captured on March 10 with a small telescope from our fair planet Earth, the scene also includes Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the Solar System’s largest storm. In fact, Ganymede is […]
