Articles

Bill Dunford

Animated maps of the planets show the spheres in motion.

Bill Dunford

Remembering the Moon's first extreme close-up.

Karl Battams

Planetary transits of the Sun by Mercury and Venus don't come along very often, and when they do we make a big deal of it because, well, it's really cool!

Andrew Chaikin

If there's one thing I've learned after decades of studying the first human voyages to another world, it's that there is always more to discover about Apollo. Case in point: The Apollo 8 Earthrise photo that became one of the iconic images of the 20th century.

Emily Lakdawalla

Watch and enjoy this full video of Chang'e 3's descent onto the lunar surface.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here it is! Animated gifs, composed of screen grabs from Chinese state television, of the Yutu rover rolling on to the lunar surface. This was a replay, but it was no less thrilling for that; the actual rollout happened at 20:40 UT (12:40 PT). Six wheels on soil! Woohoo!

Emily Lakdawalla

On December 1 at 17:30 UTC, Chang'e 3 launched atop a Long March 3B rocket on a direct lunar transfer trajectory. It is scheduled to enter orbit December 6 and land December 14. The rocket was equipped with cameras that recorded thrilling video of the launch and final departure of the probe.

Karl Battams

Comet ISON has entered the field of view of the STEREO HI-1A camera, and, in an awesome animation, it joins a large cast of characters already present there.

Emily Lakdawalla

I've been delving in to the Mars Express image archive this week, checking out its images of Phobos, and found a couple of really cool time-series of images to assemble into animations.

Emily Lakdawalla

Curiosity looked up after dark and captured more cool photos of Mars' moons. They include Phobos and Deimos passing in the night, and Phobos entering Mars' shadow.

Emily Lakdawalla

Yesterday, the Curiosity mission released the video whose potential I got so excited about a couple of weeks ago: the view, from Curiosity, of Phobos transiting Deimos in the Martian sky. In this post, Mark Lemmon answers a bunch of my questions about why they photograph Phobos and Deimos from rovers.

Bill Dunford

Seasons, sunlight, and shadow at the Moon's north pole

Emily Lakdawalla

Take a look at this amazing photo, captured by Curiosity from the surface of Mars on sol 351 (August 1, 2013). It is unmistakably Phobos.

Bill Dunford

There's a cool new way to explore the first planet.

Emily Lakdawalla

A large asteroid is passing reasonably close to Earth in a few hours, and astronomers at the great radio telescopes at Goldstone and Arecibo are zapping it. The latest discovery: QE2, like many asteroids, is a binary.

Emily Lakdawalla

A frequently-asked question last week was: if asteroid 2012 DA14 is coming so close to Earth, why hasn't anyone taken any pictures of it? Now that 2012 DA14 has whizzed past us, we do finally have some radar pictures of it, but they still may not satisfy everyone.

Bill Dunford

When the sunlight catches it just right, Saturn's F Ring is something to see.

Bill Dunford

Why spend effort and scarce resources on space exploration when we have so many problems here at home? Turns out, there are some pretty good reasons.

Emily Lakdawalla

Deep Impact has made the first space-based observations of comet ISON.

Emily Lakdawalla

A recently launched Earth-observing satellite is using the stars to practice its pointing, and caught a neat animation of Jupiter.