Remember the big picture of Andromeda that showed 100 Million stars? That image resulted in a ton of new galaxy discoveries. Most of these new galaxies were once hidden beyond the Andromeda galaxy, but with the super high resolution image, astronomers and the public were able to look straight through and see far more distant objects. Most images of galaxies have what we call ‘field stars’ in them. These are some of the 400 Billion stars of the Milky Way that are far closer than the galaxy we are imaging. For this reason, galaxy images tend to look very cluttered...
After talking about high resolution mapping of Ceres last week, it occurred to me that we have mapped so many distant worlds in our solar system. We have seen moons of Jupiter and Saturn up close, completely mapped Mars, and started mapping Pluto, pushing our boundaries of exploration. But what about our Moon? Sure the Earth-facing side has been seen in high definition. Anyone with a small telescope and a camera can take a great photo of the Moon. But what about the other side of the Moon, the so called dark side? It turns out that the Lunar Reconnaissance...
The short answer is….we don’t know. It could still be a lot of different things, but take a look for yourself and see if you can figure it out. Here are the possibilities: Ceres is soon to make a descent to its lowest orbit for final mapping, and will be orbiting only 375 Km above the surface. This will give the highest resolution data yet, and hopefully shed some light on the mystery of Occator crater. What do you think?
Ask an astronomer what the hardest thing to do is in astronomy, and chances are they will say ‘measuring distance accurately.’ It is surprisingly difficult to take the light from stars we see and match them to a correct distance. In the past we have used several different methods depending on how close a star is to us. For the nearest stars we use parallax, which looks at the change in a star’s position as the Earth is on opposite sides of it’s orbit. All other methods rely on what we call the standard candle approach. Let’s say you had...
Since the Dawn spacecraft arrived at Ceres in March of this year, it has slowly been taking high resolution maps of the surface from several different altitudes. After each successive mapping run it moves into a closer orbit of the icy world for a higher resolution glimpse. After two successful mapping runs, we finally have a full high resolution topographic map of Ceres, revealing its cratered surface in unprecedented detail. With a quick look at the map, a couple of things become apparent immediately. For one, the surface craters are quite deep, and consistent with an icy crust. The size...
Not one person’s mom, but specifically an entire nation’s. India’s Mars Orbiter Mission is lovingly known as MOM and has been sending back science data that has put India on the Space Exploration Map, if there ever was one. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched the ambitious but cost-effective MOM Orbiter on November 5th, 2013. With a bill of only 73 Million dollars, its the most cost-effective Mars mission ever, yet its sending back lovely images and science data that is worth every penny, at least to a biased spaceflight enthusiast such as myself. Whatever you feel about the...
