Check Out Kurzgesagt

Especially if you have kids with an appreciation for science. These guys regularly do great animations that explain complex science — appropriate for all ages. They also promise a series of cool videos about cool moons in our solar system. So far they have only covered our own, next up… Mars’ Deimos and Phobos.

Saturnati XXIIX

In the words of Gordan Ugarkovic, the unchallenged freelance imager of our time — “On October 10th, Cassini wide-angle camera captured a set of 12 RGB footprints covering Saturn and the rings. Here's an attempt at compositing that data into a mosaic. It's not geometrically accurate, but I tried coaxing the data into at least looking nice”.

Enceladus Lost in the Ring Haze

The tiny but very active moon Enceladus is seen here lost within the E-Ring of Saturn. The moon, as many of us know, is quite active with cryo-volcanic geysers littered throughout the ridges of the “tiger stripes” found mostly in the moon’s southern hemisphere. Since most of the ejecta from Enceladus is jettisoned fast enough to escape the tiny moon’s gravity, most the material winds up orbiting Saturn itself and is therefore helping over a very long period of time to form Saturn’s E-Ring. This at least partly helps solve the question of where Saturn’s massive ring structure originates.

Image by Val Klavans.

Mars Curiosity Parachute Image

So this is not new, but my lack of activity on WS has me missing many great moments. Since I view this site as more of an archive of amazing space imagery… there is no expiration date on any image. Above is Mars Curiosity as it parachutes to the Martian surface as seen from orbit by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Colorization was added by Ian Regan.

And a semi-recent image from Curiosity of Mount Sharp from August 2013.

Planetfall

Having followed the activities of a small army of freelance space imagers that lurk in various places on the internet for about 10 years now — it is truly unusual for me to come across images that I know I have not seen before. Michael Benson’s exhibit titled, “Planetfall” at the American Association for the Advancement of Science offers offer fresh views from missions as old as Viking and as new as Cassini. What originally caught my attention was an image of an actively spewing Enceladus that is exposed in both Sun and Saturn shine — a view I have surely seen before, but never so detailed or dramatic. Even more surprising and rare is a new global composite view of Uranus with a complete and continuous ring taken by Voyager almost 30 years ago.

The show ends soon (June 28, 2013) and is located in Washington DC.

Mimas and Herschel

Herschel is a huge crater in the leading hemisphere of the Saturnian moon Mimas, on the equator. It is the one that makes Mimas look like The Death Star. This is the best image yet of this feature taken by the Cassini probe.