Since diving into astrophotography last year, I’ve discovered that I love the concept of time-lapse, and not just with respect to astronomy. It’s amazing to see the changes that can occur over long periods of time, and time-lapse photography is a way to record the changes and see how they unfold. In astronomy the best time-lapses give you a sense of the Earth’s motion through space, show satellites zipping overhead, and show aurora dance along with weather patterns. Large amounts of time with slow incremental changes produce incredible results when it comes to time lapses. Science communication is about how to...
NASA has been zeroing in on certain features of dwarf planet Ceres and looked at them in more detail. Here are the most surprising as well as what we know so far. There are a few other great videos in this playlist, but the first one gives a great summary of what has been seen so far. The most surprising and interesting feature of Ceres in my opinion has been the Occator crater. With the enigmatic bright spots that have been observed since the Dawn spacecraft approached Ceres, we are seeing them in finer detail than ever before, and we...
After focussing all of its energy on taking science data during closest approach, New Horizons has been slowly but surely sending back the stream of information collected on the Pluto system. This long process of returning the data to Earth has meant periodic updates for humanity, and a rekindling of excitement for the newest secrets revealed about the dwarf planet. Here is a video of the region of Pluto imaged in high resolution, followed by some of the best still along the way. This is the closest and most detailed view of Pluto that humanity will have for decades. We...
Inhabited entirely by robots, Mars is the enigmatic planet that is under intense exploration by humanity. The curiosity rover has been making it’s way closer to Mount Sharp in the Gale Crater, intending to slowly climb the mountain, sampling rocks from different eras in Mars’ history along the way. One of the last regions to cross before beginning its ascent is the region known as the Bagnold dunes, strange dark features similar to sand dunes on Earth. Photos from Curiosity show the beauty and detail in the dark features. The dark dunes have very interesting ripple features, similar to those...
As the results from Pluto and its system of moons continues to pour in, we are seeing a lot of scientists keeping busy in excitement as they interpret the data and work to understand the complexities of the recently illuminated dwarf planet. The fascinating images that have returned have also been interpreted and manipulated in ways that show fascinating features and unexpected views. A recent rendering shows a complete rotation of Pluto and Charon from images taken by New Horizons. Since it takes Pluto 6 days, 9 hours, and 36 minutes to rotate, New Horizons couldn’t take high resolution images...
I feel this will be a recurring theme with my posts, especially for those who read my blog on a regular basis. I love Pluto and am fascinated by new horizons. Its like a kitten chasing a ball of yarn. But with so many new possibilities popping up with Pluto as the new horizons rendezvous draws near, its hard to contain my excitement at the prospects of great science. The latest photo taken from just under 100 Million Km distant, shows some surface features for the first time. The features are interpreted as broad surface features, some are brigt and...
You may know that the Universe is much more complex than we know. If you look at nearly anything in a different wavelength of light, new details can pop up that you’d never expect. Astronomers today use all the wavelengths of light to study the Universe. Even the most seemingly boring objects can come to life in different wavelengths. As a prime example, take the Moon. Now I don’t find the Moon boring at all, in fact it’s quite interesting and has a lot of influence on the Earth, so its fun to talk about. But when we look at...
