Deep Impact Flyby took a look back at the devastation it wrought on Comet Tempel 1 and snapped a spectacular image of impact ejecta streaming out into space in a column that has grown much larger in dimension than the comet nucleus itself. While images and other data continues to stream to the Earth from…

Members of the Deep Impact team spoke to reporters early this morning about the success of their mission to Comet Tempel 1. About ten percent of the data has been downloaded from Flyby with the remaining portion to be downloaded over the next 24 hours. The team continues to clean up the raw data to…

In a brilliant explosion, Deep Impact’s impactor spacecraft smashed into Comet Tempel 1 around 10:52 p.m. Pacific Standard Time today. The control room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Californa, USA went crazy with gasps, shouts and applause as the first images showing the impact appeared on their projector screen. The image taken by…

There is not a lot of material in the coma of Comet Tempel 1, according to scientists after studying recent observations made by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The space telescope saw a steady stream of X-rays from the interaction of the comet nucleus with the solar wind. However, the X-ray view could change during Tempel…

Deep Impact successfully deployed its impactor spacecraft early this morning on a one-way trip to destruction by Comet Tempel 1. The flyby spacecraft then burned its engines to take it out of the path of the oncoming comet before turning around and snapped the above image of the impactor spacecraft drifting away as it sparkled…

I cannot express just how excited I am by tonight’s Deep Impact with Comet Tempel 1. Because all that energy has to go somewhere (my energy, not the impact energy), I decided to keep up on the latest images and scientific data all night while providing coverage on my own website, Frontier Channel. The articles…

Deep Impact has taken an early look at some of the chemicals in the coma of Comet Tempel 1, detecting water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons via spectral analysis. The coma is an envelope of gas and dust that becomes more active as a comet approaches the Sun. Outbursts of material occur as the…

The space probe Deep Impact will attempt to make history this weekend by blasting a crater into Comet Tempel 1. Scientists expect the crater – perhaps as large as a football field – will provide them a glimpse of fresh material uncovered by the impact. While comets are plentiful in our solar system, scientists know…

Scientists examining recent images of the surface of Titan have discovered a feature that resembles a lake. The feature is near persistent methane clouds and the smoothness of its boundaries suggests shorelines, but it could instead be a dry lake bed, a depression filled with solid hydrocarbons “snowing” out of the atmosphere, or a tectonic-related…

Astronomers announced today the possible discovery of a rocky planet only twice as wide and seven and a half times as massive as the Earth orbiting a small red dwarf star about 15 light years away. Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institute of Washington, Geoffrey Marcy from the University of California, Berkeley, Jack Lissauer of…

Titan may harbor “ice volcanoes” and scientists have presented evidence for a likely candidate in the June 9 issue of Nature. Several images of the possible volcano were released to the Internet today by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Ice volcanoes may explain the high level of methane present in Titan’s atmosphere. Methane generally breaks down…

Last year astronomers working with the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile released an image of what appeared to be an exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf. In January 2005 the Hubble Space Telescope was used to snap another image, providing initial confirmation that the two bodies were gravitationally related (previously reported…

The Cassini space probe has discovered a variety of complex hydrocarbons and carbon-nitrogen compounds in the upper atmosphere of Titan. Described by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an “organic ‘factory’ of hydrocarbons” the upper atmosphere seems to be an unlikely spot for such high levels of these compounds, since they should condense and rain out…

The latest flyby of Titan by Cassini occurred on March 31, 2005. NASA has not yet released processed images and scientific feedback, but the raw images have been available for a couple days now. When looking at these raw images of Titan, there is something profoundly strange yet incredibly familiar about them. The only reasonable…

As if Titan was not exciting enough, the Cassini space probe recently detected an atmosphere around a second Saturnian moon, this time Enceladus. Cassini did not spot the atmosphere directly but discovered that Saturn’s magnetic field lines are being bent in the vicinity of Enceladus. This indicates diversion of the field by an atmosphere. Because…

On February 18, 2005 the Cassini space probe took an image of Saturn’s southern hemisphere. The interplay of the ring shadow and the banded atmosphere of Saturn at the top of the image is striking. The ring is seen nearly edge on.

On March 09, 2005 the Cassini space probe flew by Enceladus, capturing new images of the bright white moon of Saturn. The lack of craters in some regions and intense fracturing suggest past tectonic activity and resurfacing, though neither activity has been confirmed yet. While scientists try to figure out what they are seeing in…

Most of the matter in the universe appears to be missing, based on mathematical models that tell scientists there simply has to be more mass out there than we are seeing. Of this, less than two percent appears to be of the type we are all familiar with, the normal matter that makes up visible…

Scientists have been studying a feature they call the “Dragon Storm” on Saturn since it was first detected last year. This long-term storm appears to feed on an upwelling of energy. Cassini has detected radio bursts from the storm that seem to activate when the storm is on the planet’s night side and stop when…

A rumor says yes but NASA responds with an emphatic “No.”

The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is heading south on a long and flat expanse of desert. There are few rocks in the region, low dunes, and uninterrupted views of the horizon. Because of the lack of obstacles, Opportunity is covering record distances (sometimes over 150 meters a day).

Talented technicians often turn the images returned by space probes into works of art. This has most certainly been the case with many of the images returned by Cassini from the Saturnian system. Technicians combine images from different filters to try matching what the human eye would see. In the foreground image, Mimas can be…

In a little over a week, Cassini will pass within 1,179 km of another Saturn moon, Enceladus. Images already returned have revealed a young water ice surface lacking craters. The wrinkles and ridges in the image are tantalizing indicators of recent geological activity on the small (499 km in diameter) moon.

On the Earth and other bodies with poles, the polar regions are their coldest locations. While 91 Kelvin (-296 degrees Fahrenheit) may be colder than most people can imagine, Saturn’s south pole turns out to be the hottest spot on the planet. In a surprising discovery by the W.M. Keck I Observatory at Mauna Kea,…

Imagine a frigid world where complex hydrocarbon particles clump together in the thick smog-like atmosphere and fall like black snow onto a light water ice surface. Occasional methane rains and methane springs that emerge from the side of hills wash some of the particles off higher ground and concentrate them in river channels. These rivers…

Opportunity continues to study the first meteor discovered on another planet. NASA released a color image of the metallic body sitting in martian sands. The pitted meteorite is composed of iron and nickel, just like metallic meteorites that land on the Earth. Yet to be determined is how rare the object is, whether or not…

The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recently got a look at the discarded hardware from its initial descent to the surface of the Red Planet. It drove up to and examined the heat shield and other debris. Engineers are eager to study the data to learn more about the descent and landing.

It should not be too surprising that meteorites are not just rocks that have fallen from space to a final resting place on the surface of the Earth. Meteoroids fall on bodies throughout our solar system. Opportunity, the rover currently at work on Mars, recently came across a metallic-looking rock lying in the desert sands…

One of the early promises of the Information Age was contained in the adage “information wants to be free.” The massive transfer of data to digital formats and the Internet, the rapid explosion in memory capacity and communication bandwidth, and the falling price of technology are related trends reshaping humankind’s relationship with knowledge. The latest…

A new composite image from Titan appears to show a shoreline where river channels or canyons empty into a black sea. Huygens took the image as it was drifting down toward the surface. Scientists have not yet been able to confirm whether or not the black sea-like region and apparent river channels are full of…

Dr. Lyn Doose, Co-Investigator of the Descent Imager-Spectral Radiometer (DISR) instrument on the Huygens probe, presented to a packed crowd tonight at the University of Arizona’s Kuiper Space Sciences Building the first scientific results from Friday’s successful landing on Titan. Highlights of his speech included the display of the first images from the surface of…

Elated scientists are now examining the data sent from the surface of Titan by the Huygens probe. The first image was displayed in special video coverage from the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. The image appears to show a drainage system emptying into a dark body, though this has not yet been…

Astronomers believe they have captured the first-ever image of a planet outside our own solar system. This extrasolar planet orbits a brown dwarf called 2MASSWJ 1207334-393254 (or 2M1207 for short.) The image was captured by the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) on the Hubble Space Telescope. The first extrasolar planet was discovered in…

It might seem to be old news, but our own Moon has got a lot left to tell us. The European Space Agency’s probe SMART-1 successfully used its experimental ion drive engine to loop out to the Moon and is now beginning to snap new pictures. One of the mission objectives is to determine whether…

The dark material on Iapetus would look dark brown to the human eye, according to this near-true color image of the Saturnian moon. Why the moon is stained this color closer to a mysterious equatorial ridge and less so at higher latitudes remains a mystery.

Okay, get those 3D glasses out. Iapetus, the strangely-shaped and strangely-colored moon with strange landforms that defy current scientific explanation, gets the stereo treatment, with never before seen basins and craters.

Planetary science is never boring and often very surprising. Take for instance the new images sent back by the Cassini space probe of Saturn’s moon Iapetus. The moon has always been mysterious since the first Voyager images revealed a light hemisphere and a dark hemisphere. The contrast cannot be overemphasized: the dark side only reflects…

Images taken by various space probes are made available to the public soon after they are uploaded to Earth, but because of the sheer number received, most images remain in raw form until they can be calibrated and corrected. These raw images are full of artifacts from data loss, cosmic rays, and dust on the…

The Cassini spacecraft flew by the Saturnian moon Iapetus on December 31, 2004 and snapped some images. The moon is recognizable because of it has one bright side and one dark side, perhaps due to sweeping up debris on its leeward side as it orbits Saturn. Cassini will pass much closer to the moon around…

On December 24, 2004 the Huygens probe separated from the Cassini spacecraft and began a three week journey to Titan, when it will parachute through the moon’s thick atmosphere and snap images on its way to the surface. Cassini recently imaged the probe as a bright spot of light against a background of stars. Scientists…

Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is heading south after spending the better part of its mission inside “Endurance Crater” on Meridiani Planum. Within the crater, Opportunity observed bedrock and discovered strong evidence for past surface water over an extended period of geologic time (and perhaps more than once in Martian history.) The rover also looked up…

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is climbing into the Columbia Hills and up the slope of “Husband Hill”. Spirit has also discovered possible evidence for water in the region during the distant past, though the water was likely not as extensive as it was on Meridiani Planum. The Columbia Hills and surrounding terrain all sit within…

One of the highlights of the recent Cassini flyby of Titan was a detailed analysis of the moon’s atmosphere. New images reveal a complex atmosphere filled with distinct haze layers, each layer possibly composed of a different hydrocarbon. During a previous flyby, Cassini snapped images of cloud formations near Titan’s south pole. Clouds over mid-latitude…

Cassini recently flew by the Saturnian moons Titan and Dione and sent back some beautiful images. In the background image Dione is seen against the background of Saturn. What a remarkable vista if one could stand on the tiny moon and see Saturn filling up the entire sky. White streaks across the surface of Dione…

Cassini-Huygens is nearing Titan for another pass. The last orbit returned the best pictures ever of Titan but deepened the mystery of this smog-covered world. Are answers forthcoming? What will the new images reveal? What new mysteries are in store? Stay tuned!

The blue background is Saturn (made so by the scattering of blue sunlight), the tiny globe in the middle right is the moon Mimas, and the foreground tan streaks are Saturn’s rings. The rings are casting their shadows onto the planet.