Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini's amazing cameras have set a new standard for the quality, sharpness, resolution, beautiful color, and all-around spectacularness of images returned from the outer solar system.

Emily Lakdawalla

This is a special post for all of my readers who are lighting the first candle on their menorot this evening.

Emily Lakdawalla

My inbox was exploding this morning with messages about a tremendously cool animation released this morning by ESA's Mars Express team. It shows Phobos crossing Deimos, in what's known as a

Emily Lakdawalla

Welcome to the tenth post in my

Charlene Anderson

Climate change and Copenhagen are dominating the world news this week, as politicians, diplomats, scientists, and protesters gathered in the Danish city for the 2009 meeting for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here's another weird-looking one, though it's less weird from this particular, polar point of view than it is when viewed from the side.

Emily Lakdawalla

I wrote a few weeks ago about a new Send Your Name to Venus campaign conducted by the Akatsuki mission. Now The Planetary Society has arranged with JAXA to collect names and messages on our website.

Emily Lakdawalla

I love this asteroid. It's just so weird-looking.

Emily Lakdawalla

This week's Carnival of Space may be found at Steve's Astro Corner.

Emily Lakdawalla

Galileo, the scientist, discovered the Galilean satellites of Jupiter four hundred years ago next month, while Galileo, the mission, arrived at Jupiter to study those moons in situ fourteen years ago Sunday.

Emily Lakdawalla

Jupiter has been high overhead at sunset for several months, a brilliant light that's easy to spot even when the sky is still bright at dusk; but it's now moving quickly to the west as Earth speeds ahead of Jupiter's more stately march around the Sun.

Emily Lakdawalla

Umbriel is the darkest moon in a pretty dark place in the solar system, the Uranus system.

Emily Lakdawalla

Epimetheus is one of the many small moons of Saturn that are referred to by the Cassini mission team as

Emily Lakdawalla

Mercury is the smallest of the eight planets and, like Uranus and Neptune, has so far been studied only during flyby encounters.

Emily Lakdawalla

From a distance, Jupiter's fourth largest moon Europa is the smoothest object in the solar system; its outline traces out a perfect circle.

Emily Lakdawalla

253 Mathilde is the largest asteroid that has ever been visited by a spacecraft. It's held that distinction for more than twelve years, but next year it'll be upstaged by the considerably larger 21 Lutetia, which Rosetta will fly by on July 10.

Emily Lakdawalla

I've always loved advent calendars and the way they both managed and heightened my anticipation of the gift-opening frenzy of Christmas morning.

Marc Rayman

Dawn entered the main asteroid belt on November 13. As it ventures ever deeper into this vast collection of material between Mars and Jupiter, it may be tempting to think of the spacecraft constantly dodging asteroids.

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rovers managed to make history and uncover history in November and that put both Spirit and Opportunity in the planetary exploration spotlight during the 71st month of an overland expedition that was supposed to be a three-month tour.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Cassini imaging team have posted their own processed and captioned version of the Saturn's aurora movie that I posted a preview of about six weeks ago, and it was worth the wait.