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Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
The Saturn view I've been waiting for
Over the weekend, Cassini acquired a set of images that will (I am assuming) eventually be used to produce a glorious portrait of the ringed planet from a point of view that's never been seen before.
More Cassini RADAR images
Cassini just flew by Titan again on Saturday, and should have acquired a new swath of RADAR data.
New Horizons is targeting Jupiter!
New Horizons' Jupiter encounter is officially underway!
Titan's Lakes
The first peer-reviewed article on Titan's lakes comes out in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature.
Mountain range on Titan
A couple of weeks ago there were press releases coming out of the American Geophysical Union meeting about the discovery of a
CIRS gets another view of Enceladus' south polar hot spot
There's a new image product released from the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) on Cassini, an instrument that is capable of measuring the temperatures on the extremely cold surfaces of Saturn's moons and rings.
Saturn from above (2006)
Ever since I first read about the plans for Cassini's tour of the Saturn system I've been looking forward to the current phase of the mission.
Breaking a tie on the Cassini science teams
This week's Cassini Project Update was particularly interesting, because it contained a story about how a difficult decision was made regarding the prioritizing of different science teams' desires for an upcoming Titan flyby.
Cassini VIMS and RADAR: a cryovolcano on Titan?
Yesterday, the VIMS team released several images from Cassini's
New Horizons spots Pluto!
Yesterday the New Horizons team released a flicker animation showing the spacecraft's first sight of Pluto, using the LORRI long-range imaging instrument.
New names for Enceladus' features
The IAU has just approved new names for 35 craters, dorsa, fossae, and sulci on the surface of Enceladus, based upon Cassini's high-resolution mapping of the little moon. What are dorsa, fossae, and sulci, you might ask?
New Horizons is locked on target for its Jupiter encounter
Alan Stern just posted a detailed update on the status of New Horizons in his PI's Perspective blog on the mission website.
Cassini's view from the backside of Saturn
Over time, Cassini's orbit apoapsis—the point on the orbit that is farthest from Saturn—has been shifting slowly toward Saturn's night side. Lately, this point of view has resulted in some truly lovely photos of the planet.
They released the entire Cassini RADAR swath across Xanadu!
Following immediately on the heels of the release of the
Cassini's T7 RADAR view of southern Titan; northern swath coming soon
Cassini's T7 flyby of Titan occurred on September 7, 2005. They've now released the full swath of RADAR image data to the Planetary Data System; here it is for your enjoyment.
New Horizons tracks an asteroid
New Horizons is spending the summer traversing the asteroid belt. I haven't written a lot about New Horizons lately because the mission has been going so uneventfully well. But now I've got something to write about: data!!
The official publication on the second Titan RADAR swath is out
Today Nature published an article titled
Cassini RADAR: Another Flyby, Another Completely Different View of Titan
OK, I finally got a story written about the latest and greatest of the Cassini RADAR data based upon a conversation I had with with Ralph Lorenz late last week.
Cassini RADAR images of the surface of Titan
Since the last Titan flyby on April 30, the Cassini RADAR team has been releasing quite a large number of pieces of the swath to the Web.
A play-by-play of the Cassini scare on Mayday
Last week's Cassini Significant Events Report included a detailed play-by-play of the frightening morning of Mayday. I thought it was a very interesting read on how a mission deals with an