You need to upgrade your Flash Player The theme of this blog is not only and obviously space, but in particular “terrestrial worlds”, places that tend to have surfaces on which one could walk or at least attach oneself to. These places sometimes also have other earth-like familiar features such as atmospheres, weather, volcanos, geysers and perhaps, we are finding, even exotic oceans, rivers or lakes that are not necessarily made of familiar materials we are used to here at home. The second theme is imagery. Occasionally I do some retouching of images when needed if an image is incomplete or sometimes “dirty” or noisy. I will attempt to correct image shortcomings based upon other images or well-accepted presumed attributes. When this is done, notes will be offered as to what was added, why and sometimes how it was done. This way no one should ever wonder if something they are looking at is real or photoshop.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Launch

June 19th, 2009

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is up and out. Its mission is similar to that of the Surveyor missions of the early 60’s. You wouldn’t think we would be needing to do this again, but it is looking for safe places for future manned missions to land. The exciting part is that it will also be seeking out any potential for much needed resources like water trapped in permanently shaded areas in the polar regions. Not having to pack your water bottles for a long Lunar mission would be a big plus.

The best part is that LRO will observe LCROSS smash into the moon and make a big mess in October.

Apollo 11 Owners Manual

June 15th, 2009

If happen to come to own one of these bad boys from the late 60’s early 70’s you are going to need this owners manual. The original owners of these models rarely have this on-hand. If you are in the market, beware of any models from the 13 line since that model had a well-known faulty oxygen tank that is likely to scrub any potential trips to the Lunar surface you may have planned. Get it from Haynes online.

Earth Ring and the End of Kaguya

June 14th, 2009


The Kaguya moon orbiter has reached the end of its mission and on June 10th the spacecraft executed an uncontrolled impact into the surface of the moon. The impact was captured from ground-based observation (at left) and is the small round flash seen dead-center.

One of the mission’s final masterpeices of hi-def video was capturing an Earth eclipse of the Sun for the first time from the Moon. The image at top shows the details in 8 key frames and the actual video can be seen here on youTube.

I’m the Moon

June 14th, 2009

The genius that is Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt has this intriguing recurring character that comes at various times throughout its television show named “The Mighty Boosh”. Its is… “The Moon”. The Moon is an odd character that often injects an observation pretty much independent of anything related to the storyline in betwen scenes. Essentially it is Noel Fielding’s face covered in some kind of cream ala Georges Meliès classic “A Trip to the Moon” and is always, always funny.

Rings Not Entirely Flat

June 14th, 2009

Recent observations of Saturn’s rings from Cassini reveal some vertical structure to the rings. Shown here are disturbances caused by Daphnis, a small moonlet that orbits within the Keeler Gap of the rings. We have seen much of these kinds of disturbances in the rings from tiny moonlets, but the Saturninan equinox finally provides us with an angle of sunlight that reveals such structures from the long shadows they cast. The tallest shadow seen at right is Daphnis itself.

Rhea in Great Detail

June 3rd, 2009

Closest view of Rhea (moon of Saturn) at full resolution, taken at about 98,000-100,000km on February 2009. Mosaic by Exploitcorporations at unmannedspaceflight.com.

ISS Looking Like its from the Battlestar Armada

June 1st, 2009

This is one of the more theatrical images I have ever seen of The International Space Station. I think I see Adama’s living quarters.

Wow. Best Image of Hubble (The Telescope) Ever.

May 24th, 2009

Having successfully repaired/upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope in what was easily the most complicated in-space repair mission in history, the Shuttle and Hubble depart the company of one another.

Taken from NASA image caption: An STS-125 crew member aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis captured this still image of the Hubble Space Telescope as the two spacecraft begin their relative separation on May 19, after having been linked together for the better part of a week. During the week five spacewalks were performed to complete the final servicing mission for the orbital observatory.

iPhone Skins Featured on feulyourcreativity.com

May 24th, 2009

Not to re-post old material, but our iPhone planetary skins were recently posted to fuelyourcreativity.com for free download. So I thought I would just remind everyone and maybe direct a little traffic love their way. 

Shuttle and the Sun

May 18th, 2009

This image taken by Thierry Legault has been making the rounds lately. That bit of a speck seen on the Sun’s lower-right limb is the shuttle on the way to perform it’s current Hubble repair mission. The spacecraft itself can be seen in much greater detail at left and another image of The Shuttle with The Hubble Space Telescope nearby can also be seen on Thierry’s website here.

A quick google search of Thierry’s name reveals that he has been at this sort of thing before. Seen below is the Shuttle and The International Space Station as seen against The Sun in 2006. These transits happen in less than a second to a ground observer, so capturing this fleeting event is no easy task.

Solar Videos Set to Music

May 11th, 2009

This video was compiled and the music composed by Jeff Sheilds aka Podcast Troubadour. Some may recall Jeff also composed these themes for The Carnival of Space for September 2007.

More Gordan U

May 8th, 2009

Some recent posts from Gordan Ugarkovic. The first is just gorgeous, the second featuring Prometheus and Pan in the gaps, the third is also just real pretty and the 4th is two sides of Enceladus. The 2nd and 4th of these images are false color which we publish less often, but these were just too nice to deny.

Time Lapse Imagery from ISS

May 3rd, 2009

While astronaut Don Pettit was living aboard the International Space Station (ISS), he used some of his off-duty time to make time lapse videos of what he was seeing outside of the ISS window. There are a few examples of this work in this video from Science Friday (NPR). It begins with some beautiful aurora followed by a view of the solar panels rotating (they do this every 90 mins) and a simple look at the earth whirling about through a portal window.

See also this experiment involving candy corns.

NASA Discovers Graphic Designer

April 26th, 2009

Apparently the people at NASA have discovered a graphic designer. Early reports say that there may be more of them and suspect there may even be some that use Photoshop.

Saturnati XX

April 22nd, 2009

Saturn in near infrared filter. Taken late March 2009.