‘Solar System’ Archives
Your guide to finding Mars
January 2010 is a great time of year to find Mars in the night sky. Each evening it rises about 7.30 and it is easily identified with a very red glow in the sky. The main thing is where to look. Over the next few weeks it gets closer and closer and makes for easy viewing. January and Feburary are the best months to observe Mars for a [...]
Perihelion – Earth closest to the Sun
You may know that we don't have a circular orbit around the Sun. Its elliptical, that means at one point we are closest, and at another we are the furthest point away. So just about now, January 2/3 2010, the Earth will be at perihelion, the closest point on its elliptical orbit to the Sun. The Sun’s center will be 147,098,040 kilometers away [...]
Saturn Moon Ballet
Nice video of Saturn and it's moons in a dance to the sound of the nutcracker. Very festive!....It is a combination of 61 images taken from Cassini.
Titan casts a large shadow…
Titan (5150 kilometers, 3200 miles across) is Saturn's largest moon but is not pictured here. What you can see is its elongated shadow below Saturn's rings in this newly released image from Cassini. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately [...]
Titan, Enceladus, Dione, and Mimas Transit of Saturn
Taken February, 2009 - Hubble "This picture was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on 24 February 2009, when Saturn was at a distance of roughly 1.25 billion kilometres from Earth. Hubble can see details as small as 300 kilometres across on Saturn. This close-up view of Saturn's disc captures the transit of several moons [...]
Cassini/IBEX redefines the shape of the Heliosphere
Only a short month ago I posted an article discussing our current understanding of the shape of the Heliosphere and how the Sun keeps up safe from cosmic rays. The Heliosphere is the area around the Sun that repels the majority of dangerous cosmic rays. It is actually a bubble produced by the Solar Winds emitted from our Sun. A slight aside, but [...]
Stunning selection of raw images from Cassini
Its one thing to send a craft to Saturn, but another to take one stunning image after the next. Here is a collection of some of my favorite images over the last 4 months. These images are "Raw" in that they have not been processed/cleaned etc. But I'd rather get the images early that have to wait months for perfection. Enjoy the set of images. [...]
Destination Mars – Zoomable Map showing all missions
You could be forgiven for thinking that the 1975 probes Viking 1 and Viking 2 were the first missions to successful make it to Mars. In truth, the first attempts were made by the Soviet Union as early as 1960. There were 17 attempts prior to the first successful landing. The Russians got there first in 1971 when the Mars 3 lander successfully [...]
Sailing on the lakes of Titan
Imagine sailing on a lake on the moon of Titan in a nuclear powered sailing craft with Saturn rising high in the sky above you. There is wind and rain, but its a chilly -180 Celsius where Ethane and Methane flow instead of liquid water in world which has been described as an eerie version of Earth. (more...)
Rare picture of Earth as seen from Mars
This is a truely imspiring image of Earth as seen by a Nasa spacecrafts currently orbiting Mars. This photo is a mix of visual and InfraRed images and apparently took quite a bit of effort to produce. Currently Nasa have a mission to take high resolution images of Mars using the HiRISE instrument (High Resolution Imaging Science [...]
No visible 10km Plume from LCROSS impact
According to NASA TV there was no significant visible plume from the impact of the spacecraft. There is good spectographic data and it does show Sodium a cause for some excitement as it wasn't expected. Regarding the spectorgraphic data, they are being cautiously optimistic despite the lack of a visible plume, but they point blank refused [...]
LCROSS Impacts!
Moments ago LCROSS impacted into the moon. I watched it live on NASA live streaming...Will take a while to get any details...will keep you posted