Ceres Up Close

It’s mapping orbit #4 for the Dawn spacecraft as it orbits the dwarf planet Ceres.  Currently mapping at an altitude of only 385 Km, the images are stunning, and give a feeling of actually being on Ceres.  I can imagine the terrain, being in a crater, seeing the dark horizon off in the distance, the rocky-ice world untouched for Billions of years. It really reminds me of the Moon, with the powdery bright dust across the surface and craters dotting the landscape, yet when I see some of the close up craters, it feels very different from our familiar moon. ...

Heavy Metal Frost on Venus?

Venus is the most hellish place I know of in the Solar System, and maybe even the broader Universe.  Even though Venus looks pretty harmless and is named for the Roman goddess of Love, beneath the soft looking clouds lies sulphuric acid rainfall, 450 degree surface temperatures, and crushing pressure 90 times the atmospheric pressure of Earth at sea level. How do we get the surface picture of Venus above? NASA’s Magellan probe in 1994 finished mapping the surface by looking at Radio wavelengths emitted by the planet and using radar to bounce waves off the surface to measure features....