The moon next to Saturn’s F-ring in the previous image turned out to be Prometheus, one of the ring shepherd moons. The tiny body moves close enough to the ring at times to start dragging some of the ring material away. This leaves a temporary radial gap in the ring. [Header credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute…

Many of the images downloaded from Cassini are not processed right away. While the spacecraft was heading to and from Titan it snapped pictures of some of the objects in the Saturnian system. This image of the F-ring includes what appears to be a tiny moon floating serenely nearby. Since the image has not been…

Scientists admitted this morning that they are stumped by the best-ever images of the Saturnian moon Titan. At a 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time press conference this morning, team members of the Cassini/Huygens mission tried their best to avoid speculating about the nature of the terrain visible in images, with varying degrees of success. The tantalizing…

The best ever images of Titan are being beamed to Earth by the Cassini spacecraft through early this morning. Most of the pictures released by NASA so far have not been cleaned up, but reveal distinct divisions between dark and light areas, and areas were the darker material completely surrounds pockets of the light material.…

Today is the big day. The Cassini spacecraft is heading toward a close flyby of Titan, with the likely result the best pictures ever taken of the shrouded Saturnian moon. On Sunday, Cassini snapped a clear image of the moon at a wavelength that allowed it to see through the thick atmosphere. The large and…

The Cassini spacecraft at Saturn will flyby Titan again on October 26, 2004. It will be much closer this time. Scientists are hoping for clearer images of the moon’s surface and clouds. Cassini’s orbit around Saturn has shrunk considerably and it will be making more frequent flybys of the planet and its moons in the…

Dr. Laurence Soderblom from the U.S. Geological Survey provided yesterday an update on the Mars Exploration Rovers to faculty and students at the University of Arizona. Both rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are working well and could survive for another Martian year (about two Earth years). Opportunity is still inside Endurance Crater and may attempt to…

A few months ago, scientists announced preliminary data indicating the presence of methane gas in the atmosphere of Mars. The same team has now announced that this methane appears to be coming from three specific regions on the planet that also have a higher concentration of water vapor than the planetary atmospheric average. On Monday,…

The European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) recently took near-infrared images of a body apparently orbiting the brown dwarf 2M1207 that could be the first image of an exoplanet. The reddish object is calculated to be about 5 times the mass of Jupiter. Water was detected in its spectra, suggesting it is too…

NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft was successfully launched this morning at 11:15:56 a.m. PST. The spacecraft will be the first mission to the planet Mercury in 30 years and will be the first spacecraft to ever orbit the innermost planet of our solar system. When falling toward the Sun, like falling…

NASA yesterday released a new image from Cassini of the shadow of Saturn cast across its rings. While a wealth of images have been returned by Cassini in the past few weeks, only a relative few have been processed. The rest remain in raw format awaiting future processing. All images, raw and processed, are available…

Pack a pilot and enough weight and volume to equal two passengers into a privately-funded spacecraft, launch and reach a height of 100 kilometers, return safely and do it again in two weeks with the same ship – win US$10,000,000. The Ansari XPrize organization announced on Tuesday that on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 Burt Rutan,…

The Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn has returned first images of many of the planet’s moons. This first orbit will be Cassini’s longest, as Saturn and its moons are used to shrink the orbit down to something more science activity-friendly. In 89 days the spacecraft will make a close flyby of Titan. On its way out,…

The Cassini spacecraft and the Huygens descent probe should be in orbit around Saturn now after Cassini completed a 96-minute engine burn to slow down and allow itself to be caught. Because of the nearly one and one half hour speed of light time lag between Saturn and the Earth, we are only now getting…

NASA held a press conference today regarding the latest analysis of data received from the Cassini spacecraft flyby of Saturn’s moon Phoebe. The data suggests that Phoebe is a captured object that originated in the Kuiper Belt rather than the Asteroid Belt. It appears to be composed mostly of water ice and rock, with some…

SpaceShipOne and its pilot (now astronaut) Mike Melvill succeeded in reaching space and have returned to Earth. This goes into the record books as the first piloted private mission into space. Burt Rutan, chief of Scaled Composites is already planning to send a pilot into Earth orbit, after they attempt to win the Ansari X-Prize…

CNN and other news outlets are now (around 7:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time) showing live the flight of Scaled Composites’ White Knight and SpaceShipOne in its attempt at sending the first piloted private spacecraft into space. White Knight, the carrier jet, is currently heading up to 50,000 feet where it will release the SpaceShipOne space…

Researchers discussed the upcoming Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and preliminary composition results for Saturn’s tiny moon Phoebe at the University of Arizona this past Saturday. The public was invited to view informational displays, listen to speakers, and take part in a cake cutting ceremony. Dr. Michael Drake, Director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and…

Chris Schur is an astrophotographer in Arizona. Late Saturday, June 11, 2004 he set up his equipment and made a movie of the night sky, compressed down to 12 seconds. This amazing movie really gives one the sense of Earth’s rotation against the sweeping background of our galaxy.

An important trend throughout history is the overturning of our beliefs about humanity’s central position in the universe. We now know that the Earth, the Sun, and the Milky Way are not the center of the universe. We have learned that Homo sapiens evolved from the same genetic heritage as all life on the Earth.…

CICLOPS (the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations) released new images on Sunday from Cassini’s flyby of Phoebe including close-ups of craters and global images. Scientists now believe that the moon is an icy body covered by dark material. The Cassini-Huygens probe is now a little over 16 days away from entering orbit around Saturn.

Ansari X Prize competitor Scaled Composites plans to launch on June 21, 2004 the first piloted private spaceship into space, something that only governments have accomplished since Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space on April 12, 1961. The public is invited to the launch, scheduled for early morning. While not an attempt for…

Cassini began sending back data from its flyby of Phoebe early Saturday morning and the first images have been released. These images show a heavily cratered moon that may be, according to scientists, a remnant of the creation of the solar system. The surface is of an unknown dark material. Scientists will pour over the…

The best pictures ever taken of Saturn’s moon Phoebe are streaming back to Earth as Cassini rapidly approaches. Just before 2:00 pm Pacific Time today, Cassini will pass over Phoebe. The two images in the composite above were taken about 13 hours apart and show two different hemispheres of the moon. The moon appears to…

Titan, the largest moon in the Saturn planetary system, remains an enigmatic target. The latest visible light image from Cassini of Titan shows the dense cloud cover. A peak at the moon’s surface will have to wait until Huygens separates from Cassini and falls through the atmosphere in January 2005.

As viewed from the Earth, Venus is currently passing across the face of the sun, the first such transit in 122 years. The images currently coming in on various websites from amateurs and observatories in select regions of the world show a small black circle slowly making its way across the gigantic face of the…

70 percent of the mass of the universe is made up of something called dark energy. Most of the rest of the universe is made up of something called dark matter, and only a very small percentage of the mass is the type of mass we see all around us. Even the scientists who use…

Space scientists in the United States are generally underpaid and competition for the few available jobs can be fierce. The future holds both good and bad news. Especially in planetary science and astronomy, the increase in NASA missions to the planets is opening up opportunities everywhere. The Space Science Institute in Colorado is advertising openings…

NASA is now releasing a new image from Cassini a day. On May 10, Cassini imaged the shadows of Saturn’s rings on its surface and also the swirling bands of the planet’s atmosphere. Cassini is now officially in the Saturn planetary system as the gravity of Saturn holds more sway than the gravity of the…

It looks like the mission to Saturn is ramping up…today NASA released a new image from Cassini- Huygens less than a week after the last image. The outer visible ring is called the F-ring and in this image from May 1, 2004 you can see the two shepherd moons, Prometheus and Pandora, on either side…

Last Thursday NASA released a new image of Titan taken by Cassini-Huygens on May 5, 2004. The image is higher quality than anything that can be taken from Earth. As of today, Cassini-Huygens is just 37 days away from insertion into orbit around Saturn and only 18 days away from passing by Phoebe, one of…

Cassini-Huygens has sent back another glorious image of its destination. In this image, Saturn is much larger and more detailed than previous images sent back by the probe. Soon the planet will loom so large that it will not fit completely into the image frame. There are just 62 days left before Cassini-Huygens is inserted…

The rover Spirit took a panoramic picture of its destination, the Columbia Hills.

The European Southern Observatory has released new images of Saturn’s moon Titan taken by telescopes right here on Earth. Titan is the only moon in our solar system with a significant atmosphere and some detail is visible in these latest images. In January 2005, the Huygens probe will float down through Titan’s atmosphere and take…

The X Prize is US$10,000,000 for the first privately funded team to launch three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles), safely return them to Earth, and do it all over again within two weeks using the same spaceship. The prize is meant to stimulate interest and investment in space tourism and may help advance technologies…