‘Solar System’ Archives
Image of the LCROSS Lunar Impact site!
In less than 24 hours the LCROSS will smash into the Cabeus crater 100km from the Lunar south pole. I've already blogged that the idea is to smash into the Lunar surface with one part of the spacecraft, and have the second part fly through the resultant 10km cloud of debris and gather data to see what it found below the surface of the Moon... [...]
Spitzer’s warm images
The Spitzer spacecraft was designed to take infrared pictures of the cosmos. From its launch in Aug 2003 until May 2009 it has manged to take some amazing pictures of the universe. To accompish this it use a coolant which kept the Telescope IR instruments at a chilly 30 degree Kelvin so that its own instruments would not interfere with the [...]
Massive Mosaic of Mercury | Universe Today
Massive Mosaic of Mercury | Universe Today Posted using ShareThis
Jupiter Photo from Dublin Oct 4th 2009
Once again the sky was not great, but every now and then I could see the Moon and Jupiter quite clearly. So I managed to take a picture (a bit overexposed perhaps) and I caught the 4 Galilean satellites - Io Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. So then I started to wonder, how to tell them apart. Sky and Telescope have a super Java tool called Jupiter's [...]
Harvest Moon taken from the Irish Nightsky
There might be some clouds around, but there was just enough time for me to take this picture of the Harvest Moon. Taken in Dublin from my back garden using Nikon D50 Camera with a 300mm Lens, 200ISO, 1,000 shutter speed. Hope you like it!
Opportunity Finds Another Big Meteorite | Universe Today
Opportunity Finds Another Big Meteorite | Universe Today Posted using ShareThis
Viewing the sky this weekend
Want to see all the planets in 24hours? Here is a guide to viewing them over this weekend...check out the weekend sky forcast by Tammy Plotner
Messeneger Goes into “safe mode”
Despite all the hype, the Messenger spacecraft went into safe mode on it's flyby of Mercury yesterday. So all of the images and information it intended to send were never fully realized. It was still seen as a successful mission as its primary objective was to get the gravity assist it required to ensure a 2011 orbit insertion. It may be less than [...]
MESSENGER sees a new side to Mercury
By a new side of Mercury of course I mean totally new, never before seen, first time ever! Today is the day of the 3rd flyby, and MESSENGER has started to send back data and images. A series of high resolution image were taken which contains portions never before seen by a spacecraft. Take a look at this image. [...]
Throwing rocks at the Moon
If you are going to throw rocks at the Moon, you should try doing it NASA style. There is just over a week to go before the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation Sensing Satellite) mission sends the Centaur Upper stage rocket crashing into the Moon, creating a 10km plume near the Moon's southern pole. If you have a 10" or bigger scope you might [...]
New Horizons: Half way to Pluto….
It is just me or is it sort of sad that 40 years after just about everyone watched the Apollo missions, you have to dig deeper and deeper to find out what cool stuff Nasa is up to. For example, did you know that earlier this month the New Horizons spacecraft passed the 1/2 way mark to Pluto. 1.34 Billion Miles from Earth, 14 times further out [...]
Mercury Rising..
With approximately 2 days to go, the MESSENGER spacecraft took a quick snap of our Sun's closest planet. This is the third flyby which brings the spacecraft to within 142 miles of the surface and sets the stage for Oribit insertion March 2011. For more details on this program visit http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/ Credit: NASA/Johns [...]