Articles

Judy Schmidt

Artist and astrophotographer Judy Schmidt brings us a view from within the rings of Saturn.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today is the solstice, the longest winter night at Earth's north pole, the longest day of summer in the south. To give a little light to northerners in darkness today, please enjoy this gallery of images of (mostly) sunlit north poles across our solar system.

Emily Lakdawalla

ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter's science team enjoyed the opportunity in November to test out their science instruments on Mars. One of the tests involved imaging Phobos from an unusual angle.

Adam Block

Award-winning astrophotographer Adam Block shares some of his beautiful photos showcasing interstellar phenomena.

Emily Lakdawalla

ESA issued an update on the Schiaparelli landing investigation today, identifying a problem reading from an inertial measurement unit as the proximate cause of the crash. Meanwhile, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is operating its science instruments for the first time this week, and HiRISE has released calibrated versions of the Schiaparelli crash site images.

Emily Lakdawalla

Damian Peach's marvelous Jupiter photography, endlessly rotating in GIF form.

Jason Davis

A roundup of pretty pictures and news from our robotic ambassadors around the solar system, from November 4 through 8.

Ian Regan

A week ago Saturday I decided -- against my better judgment -- to tackle this monster of a mosaic. I call it the

Justin Cowart

Still images of Mars often give a false impression that Mars is a dead planet—but time-lapse imaging from the European Mars Express spacecraft reveals the planet as it really is.

Emily Lakdawalla

Following up the detection of the Schiaparelli crash site by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter CTX, the higher-resolution HiRISE camera has now definitively identified the locations of lander impact site, parachute with backshell, and heat shield impact site on the Martian surface.

Bill Dunford

More than seven years after the end of its mission, JAXA has released the entire data set from Kaguya's HDTV cameras.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's always a delight to sink my teeth into a new data set, and I have spent this week playing with one I've been anticipating for a long time: ISRO's Mars Orbiter's Mars Colour Camera, or MCC. MCC is unique among current Mars cameras in its ability to get color, print-quality, wide-angle, regional views of Mars.

Sandhya Ramesh

On Mars Orbiter Mission’s second anniversary of Mars arrival, ISRO has (finally!) made available to the public data from its first year in orbit.

Emily Lakdawalla

As OSIRIS-REx speeds away from Earth, it’s been turning on and testing out its various engineering functions and science instruments. Proof of happy instrument status has come from several cameras, including the star tracker, MapCam, and StowCam.

Emily Lakdawalla

Juno is on its second of two long orbits around Jupiter, reaching apojove (its farthest distance from the planet) today.

Emily Lakdawalla

Beautiful new amateur work with 27-year-old Voyager data.

Emily Lakdawalla

The astronomy world is abuzz today because of ESA's announcement of the first release of data from the Gaia mission. Gaia is a five-year mission that will eventually measure the positions and motions of billions of stars; this first data release includes positions for 1.1 billion of them, and proper motions for 2 million.

Björn Jónsson

A few weeks before the first Juno high resolution imaging, I decided to take a look at Voyager color images at various resolutions, with particular attention to high-resolution mosaics.

Emily Lakdawalla

Titan's north polar lakes are well-lit by summer sun in these recent Cassini images. Image processing enthusiast Ian Regan shares his recipe for processing the longer-wavelength Titan images into visually pleasing

Emily Lakdawalla

The European Space Agency has shared plans for the end of the Rosetta mission scheduled for September 30, just three weeks from now. The landing site will be located on the