Saturn’s rings, edge on, as seen by Cassini

Saturn’s rings, edge on, as seen by Cassini

[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 […]

Curiosity’s road trip on Mars

Curiosity’s road trip on Mars

[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 […]

Who, or what, dropped that jelly donut on Mars?

Who, or what, dropped that jelly donut on Mars?

[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 […]

Followed by a moon shadow: 1989 Neptune images from Voyager 2 reviewed 20 years later

Followed by a moon shadow: 1989 Neptune images from Voyager 2 reviewed 20 years later

[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, […]

A rare triple-eclipse on Jupiter

A rare triple-eclipse on Jupiter

[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 […]

A view of Saturn that would have been impossible from Earth

A view of Saturn that would have been impossible from Earth

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / NASA/JPL/SSI; Composition: Gordan Ugarkovic] This image of Saturn could not have been taken from Earth. No Earth based picture could possibly view the night side of Saturn and the corresponding shadow cast across Saturn’s rings. Since Earth is much closer to the Sun than Saturn, only the day […]

When home is far away

When home is far away

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] / Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA & NASA/JHU Applied Physics Lab/Carnegie Inst. Washington In a cross-Solar System interplanetary first, our Earth was photographed during the same day from both Mercury and Saturn. Pictured on the left, Earth is the pale blue dot just below the rings of […]

Freeze frame miracle: Venus, moon, clouds, birds

Freeze frame miracle: Venus, moon, clouds, birds

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] /  Isaac Gutiérrez Pascual Sometimes the sky above can become quite a show…. In the above image taken in Spain, a crescent Moon and the planet Venus, on the far right, were captured during sunset posing against a deep blue sky.   In the foreground, dark storm clouds loom across […]

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