Tag Archive for 'Solar System'

This high-resolution image of Pluto was taken by New Horizons on July 14, 2015: yellow circle shows location of Wright Mons and Piccard Mons mountains on the dwarf planet. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Geologists Spot Possible Cryovolcanoes on Pluto

Nov 10, 2015 by Natali Anderson

Using images of Pluto’s surface, geologists with the New Horizons mission have discovered that two of dwarf planet’s mountains could be cryovolcanoes...

This composite image is based on observations from New Horizons’ Ralph/LEISA instrument made on July 14, when the spacecraft was 50,000 miles (81,000 km) from Charon. The data were downlinked October 1 - 4 and processed into a map of Charon’s 2.2 micron ammonia-ice absorption band (green color). Panchromatic images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager used as the background in this composite were taken on July 14 and downlinked October 5 – 6. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

NASA Researchers Spot Young Ammonia Crater on Pluto’s Moon Charon

Nov 5, 2015 by News Staff

A fresh crater caught attention of New Horizons team members as they were studying high-resolution infrared image of Pluto’s largest moon. This composite...

This wide-angle image was made just 15 minutes after New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015. It was taken with New Horizons’ Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera from a distance of 11,000 miles. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Team Releases New Images of Pluto

Oct 30, 2015 by News Staff

Scientists on NASA’s New Horizons mission have released a remastered image of Pluto’s crescent, a new, low-resolution image of the dwarf planet and...

An artist’s conception of a gas giant planet and its moons. Image credit: Greg Bacon, STScI / NASA.

Jupiter May Have Ejected Solar System’s Fifth Giant Planet, Astronomers Say

Oct 30, 2015 by News Staff

A close encounter with Jupiter approximately 4 billion years ago may have resulted in another giant planet’s ejection from the Solar System, according...

This close-up image shows Occator crater and a cluster of bright spots. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

NASA Releases New Image of Ceres’ Enigmatic Bright Spots

Oct 27, 2015 by News Staff

NASA scientists, using a camera aboard the agency’s Dawn spacecraft, have created a stunning mosaic image of a small part of Ceres’ surface. The mosaic...

New Horizons Captures Images of Pluto’s Small Moon Kerberos

Oct 23, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent back four low-resolution images of Kerberos, Pluto’s tiny moon. This image of Kerberos completes the family...

This image of Pluto’s surface was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shortly before closest approach to the dwarf planet on July 14, 2015. The scene is about 130 miles (210 km) across. The Sun illuminates the scene from the left, and north is to the upper left. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Delivers New Close-Ups of Pluto and Charon

Oct 19, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons team has released new close-up images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. The images were taken by New Horizons’ Long Range...

This image from Cassini shows battered terrain around the north pole of Enceladus. Craters crowd and overlap each other, each one recording an impact in the moon’s distant past. The moon’s north pole lies approximately at the top of this image. North on Enceladus is up. The view was acquired at a distance of 4,000 miles (6,000 km) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 8 degrees. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

New Close-Up Photos of Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Released by NASA

Oct 18, 2015 by News Staff

NASA scientists have released the best views yet of the northern extremes of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The images were collected as the agency’s Cassini...

This Pluto mosaic was made from New Horizons LORRI images taken on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 49,700 miles (80,000 km). This view is projected from a point 1,118 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equator, looking northeast over the dark, cratered Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. Pluto’s North Pole is off the image to the left. This mosaic was produced with panchromatic images from the New Horizons LORRI camera, with color overlaid from the Ralph color mapper onboard New Horizons. Image credit: S.A. Stern et al, doi: 10.1126/science.aad1815.

New Horizons Team Releases First Scientific Results from Flyby of Pluto System

Oct 16, 2015 by News Staff

The dwarf planet Pluto displays a wide variety of geological landforms, including those resulting from glaciological and surface-atmosphere interactions...

This global map of Jupiter was made during the Hubble OPAL Program. The map was observed on 19 January 2015, from 2:00 UTC to 12:30 UTC. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, GSFC / M. Wong, University of California, Berkeley / G. Orton, JPL-Caltech.

New Global Maps of Jupiter Unveiled

Oct 14, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the University of California, Berkeley,...

This global digital map of Titan was created using images taken by Cassini’s imaging science subsystem (ISS). The mean radius of Titan used for projection of this map is 1,600 miles (2,575 km). Titan is assumed to be spherical until a control network is created at some point in the future. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

NASA Releases Updated Maps of Saturn’s Moon Titan

Oct 13, 2015 by News Staff

NASA has released a global digital map of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and two polar stereographic maps its northern and southern hemispheres. This...

New Horizons finds water ice on Pluto: the scene is approximately 280 miles (450 km) across. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Finds Red-Colored Water Ice on Pluto

Oct 12, 2015 by News Staff

Using data from the Ralph spectral composition mapper that flew aboard NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, planetary researchers have detected water ice...

According to NASA scientists, complex chemical compounds called tholins give Pluto a distinctive blue haze. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Latest New Horizons Image Shows Pluto’s ‘Blue Skies’

Oct 9, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has beamed back the first color image of Pluto’s atmosphere. New Horizons looks toward the night side of Pluto and sees...

New Horizons Sends Back New Images of Pluto’s Moons Nix and Hydra

Oct 7, 2015 by News Staff

Nix and Hydra, two of Pluto’s small moons, appear in glorious sharpness in close-up pictures released this week by a New Horizons team member. Nix is...

This impressive view of Charon was captured on July 14, 2015. Charon’s color palette is not as diverse as Pluto’s; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region, informally named Mordor Macula. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

NASA’s New Horizons Team Releases High Resolution View of Charon

Oct 1, 2015 by News Staff

This high-resolution ‘extended color’ view of the Pluto-facing hemisphere of Charon – taken by New Horizons’ Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging...

Rosetta NavCam image taken on 14 March 2015 at 85.7 km from the center of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; it has been cleaned to remove the more obvious bad pixels and cosmic ray artefacts, and intensities have been scaled. Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM / CC BY-SA IGO 3.0.

67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Was Once Two Separate Comets

Sep 30, 2015 by News Staff

According to a new paper in the journal Nature, two comets collided in the early Solar System to give rise to the extraordinary shape of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This...

This is a color-coded topographic map of Occator crater. Blue is the lowest elevation, and brown is the highest. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS.

NASA Scientists Release Improved Maps of Dwarf Planet Ceres

Sep 30, 2015 by News Staff

Scientists with NASA’s Dawn mission have released new color-coded maps of Ceres showing the highs and lows of topography on the dwarf planet’s surface...

This high-resolution image of Pluto was taken by New Horizons on July 14. Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

NASA Releases New High Resolution Images of Pluto

Sep 25, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons has beamed back its best color picture of the dwarf planet Pluto, as well as other stunning, close-up images of the planet’s surface...

This view of Pluto, based on the latest images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles (1,800 km) across. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

NASA Scientist Creates New Virtual Tour of Pluto

Sep 22, 2015 by News Staff

Dr Stuart Robbins, a New Horizons team member from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has produced a new animation/flyover of Pluto...

This panoramic image of Pluto highlights dwarf planet’s varied terrains and extended atmosphere. The scene measures 780 miles (1,250 km) across. The smooth expanse of Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3.5 km) high, including Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. To the right, east of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers. The backlighting highlights over a dozen layers of haze in the atmosphere of Pluto. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 km) to Pluto. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Latest Panoramic Image of Pluto Reveals ‘Arctic-Like’ World

Sep 18, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft snapped this remarkable panoramic view of Pluto’s crescent on July 14, 2015. This picture, taken with the spacecraft’s...

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