An artist’s rendition of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its upcoming encounter with Jupiter. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
New Horizons has been back in the news again over the last week in advance of its February rendezvous with Jupiter. As noted in their press release:
The fastest spacecraft ever launched, […]

Well, the commute is a bit much for my taste, but it sure affords one heck of a view. I’d never gotten around to posting these — two of my favorite images from December’s STS-116 mission to the ISS.
Larger resolution versions and many more are available in NASA’s gallery of human spaceflight.

(12 Dec. 2006) — […]

These stunning views of Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1) were captured by its discoverer, Rob McNaught, from the Sliding Spring Observatory in Australia (roughly 400 km Northwest of Sydney). The images were taken on January 20th after sunset. The 90-second (top) and 50-second (bottom) exposures beautifully highlight the wispy remnants of the comet’s dust tail.

Observers in […]

The ISS in its present configuration, photographed from Shuttle Discovery on December 19th, 2006 during the STS-116 mission. An incredible view from some 220 statute miles above our big blue marble.
Since construction of the ISS has resumed in full after the setbacks suffered by the Shuttle program (e.g. Columbia accident, previous issues with foam shedding […]

Northerners are generally accustomed to weathering frigid winters and all sorts of nasty frozen precipitation (I moved South to escape all that, or so I thought). When consecutive days of winter storm warnings hit central Texas, however, everything pretty much comes to a grinding halt. Thankfully my electricity didn’t go out during this time; the […]

This phenomenal shot of Saturn was released by the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) back on October 11th, 2006. The mosaic consists of 165 images from Cassini’s Wide Angle Camera, assembled from a three-hour observing stint on September 15th when Saturn shielded the spacecraft from the Sun’s brilliance. Visit this page to […]

A large pillar of gas and dust atop NGC 2264 (the Cone Nebula), imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2002. Credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M.Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team, and ESA.
I’ve been in the process of performing some long-overdue upgrades and making improvements to the […]