The folks at the Chandra X-Ray Observatory recently held a contest on their web site, allowing viewers to vote for their favorite Chandra imagery spanning the telescope’s observations to date. (Even though the voting has officially ended, you can still make your picks if you’re so inclined.) Of the 48 nominees, here’s the final […]

Cassini looks into the 245-kilometer (150-mile) wide crater Melanthius in this view of the southern terrain on Tethys. The crater possesses a prominent cluster of peaks in its center which are relics of its formation.
Notable here is a distinct boundary in crater abundance — the cratering density is much higher in […]

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has posted a nifty new slideshow highlighting imagery returned by the Spitzer Space Telescope. This is my favorite of the batch; a composite view of M82 (a.k.a. The Cigar Galaxy) which combines observations from a trio of venerable orbital observatories: Hubble, Spitzer, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Image Credits: NASA, JPL-Caltech, STScI, […]

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
To celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope’s 16 years of success, the two space agencies involved in the project, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), are releasing this image of the magnificent starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82). This mosaic image is the sharpest wide-angle view ever […]

Immediately on the heels of a successful orbital insertion two days ago, the European Space Agency today released the spacecraft’s first views of Venus. While I was eagerly anticipating the first Venus Express release from ESA, I was not expecting we’d receive imagery, data, and scientists’ first impressions so quickly (VE should begin its full […]

As the Mars Exploration Rovers continue their respective journeys - now beyond eleven times that of their original mission design - the findings keep accumulating. In reviewing the latest MER press release, I was totally captivated by this layered section of Erebus returned by Opportunity:

Image Credit: NASA /JPL / Cornell (click to enlarge)
The stack […]

Image Credit: ESA
After an interplanetary trip of 153 days and logging 250 million miles along the way, ESA’s Venus Express has completed its orbital insertion as planned. ESA reports that the VOI was a complete success, the orbiter is in good health, and it’s been confirmed that the spacecraft is sending telemetry back to Earth. […]