STEREO is NASA’s Solar orbiter, preceding Earth by about 120 degrees in our solar orbit. This sequence was shot looking back towards Earth with the PanSTARRs comet streaking by. Most amazing thing I’ve seen yet. Hollywood special effects NOT required!
(Video below the jump)
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9.5 hours of solar flare condensed into 4 minutes:
This video is a tribute to 8 years of the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around the Saturn system. It was created by Nahum Mendez Chazarra (Spain) with 15 000 images taken by Cassini since 2004. Nahum is currently finishing a degree in Geology at the University of Granada, Spain and spends his spare time with HiTranslate project, translating the captions of the images taken with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter into other languages.
My ever favourite Scientist, Emily Lakdawalla, posts up a great, great article about images of the Moon transiting the Earth. There are a few glitches, which she explains. The following animation is put together from the various images sent from Deep Impact:
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Someone captured the meteor that airburst over Russia last week. This is an animated gif of the original video.
It’s a rather large file, so will take some time to download…)
via JPL Photojournal comes this stunning view of Saturn backlit by the Sun from Cassini:
I am seriously unable to view this picture as large as it should be seen.
Original Caption Released with Image:
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn, taken while the spacecraft was in Saturn’s shadow. The cameras were turned toward Saturn and the sun so that the planet and rings are backlit. (The sun is behind the planet, which is shielding the cameras from direct sunlight.) In addition to the visual splendor, this special, very-high-phase viewing geometry lets scientists study ring and atmosphere phenomena not easily seen at a lower phase.
Since images like this can only be taken while the sun is behind the planet, this beautiful view is all the more precious for its rarity. The last time Cassini captured a view like this was in Sept. 2006, when it captured a mosaic processed to look like natural color, entitled "In Saturn’s Shadow" (see PIA08329.) In that mosaic, planet Earth put in a special appearance, making "In Saturn’s Shadow" one of the most popular Cassini images to date. Earth does not appear in this mosaic as it is hidden behind the planet.
Also captured in this image are two of Saturn’s moons: Enceladus and Tethys. Both appear on the left side of the planet, below the rings. Enceladus is closer to the rings; Tethys is below and to the left.
This view looks toward the non-illuminated side of the rings from about 19 degrees below the ring plane.
Images taken using infrared, red and violet spectral filters were combined to create this enhanced-color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 17, 2012 at a distance of approximately 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale at Saturn is about 30 miles per pixel (50 kilometers per pixel).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Image Addition Date:
2012-12-18
Amazing photo of the Milky Way composed of over 100 sepearate images at Incredible Astrophoto Mosaic: Via Láctea in Alentejo. Taken and assembled by Miguel Claro. See his website for more wonderful work.
tamouse__ steps to the line.
“Happy 15th Birthday, Cassini! Keep sending us your travel pictures!”
tamouse__ downs her drink and throws the glass into the fireplace.
**CRASH**
Found this on facebook:
