Messenger Reveals Unseen Mercury

Little coming in from Messenger at this point due to some unexpected bandwidth issues at the receiving stations. Apparently there has been some Ulysses (a separate Solar observing mission) anomaly that needed tending to and has taken up the available bandwidth that had been planned for Messenger’s data. The data is reportedly fine and ready for transmission to Earth, just a delay.

For now the mission team has released this view of Mercury from the historic swing by on January 14. Much (if not all) of this image represents areas on the planet never before seen by human eyes. Very moon-like… hoping for something to come from this encounter that will be visually exciting for we the unwashed-masses. That said, scientists and the planetary sort are thrilled to be seeing this local neighbor which has been long overdue for a follow-up mission to the Mariner mission of 33 years ago.

Mercury Here We Come

Today’s flyby will come as close as 200km from the surface. That is comparable to some of the close flybys of the Saturnian moons made by Cassini.

See here for Ted’s colorization of this image based upon his Mariner 10 work.

Mariner 10 Image Made New

According to Ted Stryk (a regularly featured imager) this image has been under construction for over a year (higher resolution available here). If you are unaware, to date… no color images have seen the light of day from the 1973 Mariner 10 encounter. So it is with unexpected shock that we are granted this fine image from an old encounter the night before we are expected to be dazzled with a plethora of new Messenger images.

Although different missions are handled differently than others, we may not be granted all images as soon as they are received here on Earth. For example, Cassini has its images open almost immediately through the raw files link… while ESA makes us wait (and still does) while they release “official” images and other reports to the press. The Cassini method is far greater an option as freelance imagers will get color composites up and available hours after an encounter while you may wait weeks for the official imaging team to get around to making color composites for public consumption. I fear the latter will be true of Messenger (especially as Mercury is not expected to be an overly colorful place), but most US based planetary missions have been great about sharing the wealth practically in real time… hopefully Messenger follows the trend.

So enjoy this for now — as stated by JRehling at unmannedspaceflight, “The best Mercury image in mankind's history -- for another week.”

F-Ring Animation

Prometheus disturbing the F-Ring as it passes. We have seen this animated before, but perhaps not from such a vantage point.

Improved Epimetheus Image Released

This improved image of Epimetheus was released to the Cassini site yesterday and as compared to this more raw image post from December 8, it is most notably cleaner, processed in color and appears to be much sharper.

This is a view of the moon’s more southern pole and there is speculation that covering a majority of this face is actually one large impact crater which could explain it’s flattened appearance. There also seems to be what looks like a deposit or “dusting” of material all over this face which seems to blanket flat areas and begins to fill some craters and other depressed regions. The moon is only about 70 x 50 km in size, approximately the size of a city such as Los Angeles.

Messenger at Mercury in 2 Days

Nothing to show at this point (except some distant calibration images), but Messenger will arrive at Mercury on January 14th. This is the first visit to the tiniest planet since 1973. On that visit the Mariner spacecraft flew by the same region 3 different times — therefore leaving more than 50% of this planet yet unseen by human eyes. With the arrival of Messenger, most of what has not yet been imaged will be revealed in 2 more additional flybys and surely 100% will be revealed once Messenger achieves orbital insertion in 2011. With the exception of Pluto and its partner Charon, Mercury represents one of the largest pieces of real estate not yet mapped or imaged by some kind of probe in all our solar system.

Earth Aurora and Crater from ISS

Above is an aurora as seen from The International Space Station. The large white circular feature seen at the top is the Manicouagan impact crater located in northern Canada.

NOTE: Some image alteration has been applied to remove a large amount of noise and discoloring largely from the area of black space below the Earth.

Wallpaper: Southern Saturn

The Gordan Ugarkovic fan club must be thrilled this week with all the recent Saturn images. This new one is among the best around, reminiscent of the fantastic Ian Regan composite. A gorgeous view of Saturn’s southern pole which has seen very little exposure in terms of global views (or near global) like this. The now famous “storm” dead-centered around the pole can be seen directly to the left of the image caption.

As always, the Ugarkovic flickr page for all the latest.

NOTE: An ever so slight amount of Photoshop image extension was applied to the far right side of the image only at the edge. Probably about .5% of the image.

My Sci-Fi Bookcover Past III

This one was fun as it was supposed to be based upon real science, so we were able to take advantage of more reality based imagery. The idea was to get a good image of an astronaut with a suitcase and just have that with the title. A google search for astronauts turned up this excellent image of a guy looking like he is literally truckin to the launch pad. So we switched the color of his uniform, darkened the visor (one of the only things you cannot do with NASA images is show an astronaut’s likeness) and tried to make the case look a bit more like a suitcase than an oxygen unit of some kind. It really was perfect, but not high resolution enough to go large… so to fill the frame other astronaut legs were added to suggest the story is about mankind, not just the dude with the case.

Of all the Tor Books Chopping Block executed, this was always a favorite of mine.

Saturnati IX

Gordan is having at Saturn again.

Wander In Space Tee at redbubble.com

We posted this tee available for sale at redbubble.com that borrows from the old NASA logo to create this visual play on words. The quality above looks a bit low, but see the link for a better representation. This is the second tee we are posting here and due to a simple address error, we have not received either product to do a review. Once that happens we will post.

Saturn’s Southern Pole

And here we have another Ugarkovic gem.

Slow News Month (kind of)

I haven’t been able to keep up the site lately (and there really hasn’t been too much to post either). The intention is to continue the site as it had been maintained before the December slump after the new year. Happy Holidays.

Pluto Tee

Hard to find nicely designed planetary items. Too late maybe for Xmas, but certainly not too late to get it in time for New Horizons flyby in 2015!

Unusual Stains on Mars

Link to story

Epimetheus

A new look at a minor Saturn moon Epimetheus. Image credit is Ian Regan, the same creator of this super awesome Saturn image.

Smallsteps Wallpaper: Lunar Orbiter 3

Just a note that the “atmospheric” looking haze there is surely a camera artifact, but that is part of all the fun in these early space shot images. I dig the noise and the rough nature of these images.

Smallsteps Wallpaper: Lunar Orbiter 1

In August 1966 NASA began the Lunar Orbiter series of missions that were intended to get up-close images of smooth areas of the moon suitable for landing both Surveyor unmanned lander probes as well as the eventual manned missions of Apollo. Note that these missions had only begun 3 short years before the successful Apollo 11 mission that saw mankind take its first steps onto the surface of another world… now that is some turn-around time! Lunar Orbiter 1 actually took place while the Surveyor series of missions had already begun. This would suggest that some of the data obtained from the Lunar Orbiter probes were collected and used immediately in the execution of Surveyor missions.

This first Lunar Orbiter mission is credited for returning the first 2 images of Earth as seen from the distance of the moon. Most people refer to these kinds of images as “Earthrise” images, although that description is incorrect in the traditional sense of the word. Since the same side of the moon always faces Earth, an Earthrise is only possible in a Lunar orbiting spacecraft that is in effect chasing the Earth. Down on the surface of the moon… if you can see Earth in the sky, then you will always see Earth in the sky. It will always be in the same place, at the same size and at all times of the Lunar day.

Cassini Tee at redbubble.com

One day wanderinspace.net expects to release a poster celebrating the Cassini mission. In the meantime, there is this tee available for sale at redbubble.com that features the Cassini spacecraft which will be featured in that design.

We just ordered one and it hasn’t come in yet. So we don’t know how the printing quality will be… we cannot vouch for that as of this time. But the site does offer that they come on American Apparel tees available for in men and women’s sizes, which are known to be top quality tees. When the purchase arrives here at wanderingspace control center, we will offer an update.

This STS-82 Image is Not a Painting

Since I have been posting so many images from STS-118 recently, I started rummaging through the Space Shuttle archives at the NASA website. One image stood apart from the rest as completely unreal. Even as a thumbnail, I assumed it was “space art” or some kind of promotional image used on a poster and almost didn’t even click on it. However, this is not a composite, collage or painting. It is actually an image of astronaut Joseph R. Tanner from STS-82 taken back in 1997.

Take a look at what can be seen in here. It is like the entire Shuttle program in one snapshot. There is the obvious… the sunburst, crescent Earth, back end of the Shuttle Orbiter itself and of course the astronaut. Take a closer look and there is more at a glance… In Tanner’s visor is the reflection of the other spacewalker Gregory J. Harbaugh who took the image and attached to Tanner’s arm is the small checklist of tasks that astronauts use on such difficult tasks such as spacewalks.

The original exposure was quite grainy and lots of color noise due to the low-light conditions. So it was cleaned up a bit color-wise and a duplicate of the image itself has been blurred and screened over the other. This gives the image a sort of “romantic” glow but more importantly helps reduce the noise while maintaining the image’s overall details.

On a note of interest, STS-82 also happens to be one of the Hubble Space Telescope repair missions which extended the life of that most valuable scientific program.