Nice color (close to natural) from July 14, 2005 by Gordan Ugarkovic. The resolution wasn’t very high, so this is as big as it gets.

On Cassini’s close shave of Enceladus it captured and image of what seems to be a strange tall mound of something at middle right. Look at how long a shadow it casts.

This is also in semi-false/true color using infrared, green and ultraviolet for RGB. Can you tell from its richness of color?!

I am no scientist, but I would think that the wispy soft lines billowing from this fracture on Enceladus are the famed geysers we have seen so much of from a distance (see the upper right side of the fracture in particular). The geysers have been easily seen from more distant and back-lit images taken of Enceladus, and we know this area being imaged is the source. So wouldn’t it be fairly safe to assume that it is happening in several of these frames?

It may just be that the particles are too fine to be seen at this distance. Consider that they previously have only visible at greater distances when the plumes are back-lit in low-light situations. Seeing this activity from this distance may be kind of like trying to see a cloud when you are already in it… only harder.

From around 1288 km. Looks like T minus 10 seconds to touch down!

From 1567 km.

From 2621 km.

Closest image returned so far. Lots of missing data on the right was duplicated to fill in the gaps. This results in the right side looking lower in resolution than the left.

Its been slow around here lately, but the Aug 11 planned close flyby of Enceladus should spice things up a bit. Cassini is now in it’s extended mission and Enceladus has been made a secondary target for the coming months with the primary target being the continued exploration of Titan.

“Evidence of Soil Habitability Inconclusive.”

See The Planetary Blog on the results from Phoenix. Results could actually be the opposite of what we are hoping for…

“Many people — including, I must admit, me — took this sentence to mean that a special briefing had taken place, alerting the White House to some positive news about life on Mars.”

Emily Lakdawalla comments on the Phoenix hub-bub which may have been over-blown.

“It would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more “provocative” than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface.”

Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society will host a web stream on this matter Wednesday night.

Read more

I cannot stop looking at this animation. The first frame was taken on the 8th sol (a Mars day) and the second around the 31st sol. As you can see from the animation, it seems that some mystery material is either growing, moving or multiplying around one of the legs of the Phoenix lander. The most likely source is frost building up on what would be a very cold surface, however the only issue is that it doesn’t look exactly like frost and it hasn’t appeared on any of the other legs.

Image note: We added an artificial fade from 1 frame to frame 2 and scaled the original image to around 300%. Due to artifacts from increasing the scale and compression we added some noise to smooth out the overall appearance.

It looks like Phoenix is finding results with chemistry analysis tests that suggest Martian soil could - or could have supported life. We have known for a while now that elements like magnesium, sodium, potassium and chlorine are all found in Martian soil. Now we also know that the soil alkalinity is comparable to that which we grow all kinds of plants in here on Earth.

There are more tests to be done, but these results could make growing vegetables in Martian soil a reality one day. It also makes it more conceivable that some kind of life may one day have existed on Mars… or even currently.

Thank you… its just what we came for. Now, can we have that in a glass or perhaps with some bacteria?