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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Looking for long waves
Why JWST observes in the infrared.
Processing images of the cosmos and returning to the Moon
Take a look at space image processing, and try it yourself. Plus, catch up on the week’s space news.
Curiosity Gazes Upon Noctilucent Clouds Over Gale Crater
Wispy clouds of stunning beauty fly over Curiosity every evening.
Adapting an iPhone for Astrophotography
The sky is the limit, providing you’re willing to invest a little time for what is a surprisingly low-budget, hands-on project.
Fun With a New Data Set: The OSIRIS-REx Earth Flyby
The OSIRIS-REx team recently issued their first data release to the Planetary Data System. This release doesn’t include any closeup pictures of asteroid Bennu, but it does include all the pictures they took during their September 2017 Earth flyby.
Touchdown for InSight's Heat Probe
InSight has gone two for two, placing the second of its instruments gently on the Martian ground.
Why are there no stars in most space images?
Look up at space at night from a dark location and you can see innumerable stars. Why, then, do photos of so many things in space show black space, devoid of stars?
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Spots InSight Hardware on Mars
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has finally spotted the InSight lander, its parachute, and its heat shield resting on the Martian surface. The images confirm the location of InSight's landing site, a little to the north and west of the center of the landing ellipse. The lander is located at 4.499897° N, 135.616000° E.
My 18-Month Affair With Titan
Ian Regan, producer of the Titan segment of In Saturn's Rings, describes the meticulous process of creating the stunning visuals of this shrouded moon.
Hayabusa2 arrived at Ryugu, so I can make comparisons of asteroid scales!
On 26 June 2018, Hayabusa2 arrived at its target asteroid, Ryugu. In a very brief status update, I present comparisons of Ryugu to other previously visited asteroids and comets.
The curious case of the Apollo 4 Earth images
Revisiting images of Earth taken from the uncrewed Apollo 4 command module in 1967.
Eleven perijoves
Seán Doran has made a cool visual index to the images that JunoCam took during Juno's first 12 closest approaches to Jupiter.
Juno meets Cassini: A new merged global map of Jupiter
The Juno spacecraft that is currently orbiting Jupiter has obtained the first good images of Jupiter's polar regions. I am presenting here a combined global map of Jupiter, made from a Cassini map I made for the equatorial and temperate regions and polar maps made from the Juno JunoCam and JIRAM polar images.
Juno's 12th perijove in lifelike color
With the help of some preprocessing of JunoCam images by Mattias Malmer, Don Davis shows us how Jupiter might have looked on April 1, 2018, if we'd been aboard Juno.
Refreshing the Viking Orbiter views of Mars
Justin Cowart reprocesses Viking Orbiter images from the 1970s and 1980s to reveal their unique and beautiful perspectives on the planet.
Moon Monday: Prometheus
Happy Monday! Here's a picture of Prometheus. You may think it's a picture of Saturn. Look hard, toward the bottom, and you'll see Prometheus, doing its part to keep the F ring in line.
Moon Monday: Deimos
Digging into the Viking archives to produce a new old composite of Mars' smaller moon.
Diving into Juno JIRAM data archives
The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument can obtain images in two infrared bands. JIRAM can see the nightside of Jupiter (including the winter pole) and takes spectacular animations.
Moon Monday: Galileo's Galileans
This week it seems fitting to feature a portrait of the Galilean moons by Galileo.
#MoonMon: Io's pretty plumes
On this Moon Monday, I'm featuring an animation processed by Gordan Ugarkovic, showing Jupiter's volcanic moon Io with its prominent plumes.