The images are in from yesterday’s flyby.  Take a look at Mercury:

Credit:  NASA/Johns Hopkins
MESSENGER

Here is that unnamed impact basin, seen for the first time.  The outer diameter is about 160 miles.  The basin has a double-ring structure with a floor of smooth plains material.  The lighter material is of course ejecta.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins
MESSENGER

Here is Mercury’s northern horizon.  I think this is absolutely beautiful:

Credit:  NASA/Johns Hopkins
MESSENGER

This image is about 260 miles across.  Mercury certainly has been pounded, hasn’t it? The lower right corner is near Mercury’s terminator (the line between the light and dark sides of the planet).

This next image almost knocked me out of my chair.  I can’t believe how beautiful this is:

Credit:  NASA/Johns Hopkins
MESSENGER

Parts of this image have never been seen before; not in the previous flyby missions, or the Mariner passes.  The sunlit disc up against the blackness of space is simply breathtaking.

One more for the blog, and then I’ll let you go to MESSENGER’s website to look at some close-ups:

Credit:  NASA/Johns Hopkins
MESSENGER

The yellow arrow points to a crater with a degraded wall, while the blue arrows show an area of multiple impact.  The white arrows point to craters with only the rim visible, possibly having been filled by lava.

Visit the MESSENGER website for more information.

Goodbye Mercury, until 2011.

The Milky Way seen from Oregon. Click for a larger version ~117 k (full res below). Image credit: Matt James

Update:  Here is an annotated version of the image done by Gary S, a dedicated reader.  Note: this is ~ 431 k so dial up users should expect the image to show up in due time.  It was about as small in file size as I could make it.  Oh also note the meteor  or satellite streak in the upper left.  I’m leading towards meteor.

Here is an image of the Oregon sky courtesy of the photographer and reader Matt James.  Matt you have a fine image here.  Just look at all those stars, beautiful is what it is.  As I was studying this image and all I could think of is “there are people out there that doubt there is life elsewhere”, there is, has to be.

Matt used a Canon 5D mk II with a Canon 24-70 set to 24.  This was a 30 second exposure at f/2.8 (iso 3200).

A very nice image indeed!  Great work Matt, leave a comment and let us know the time you took it and the general area (I want to identify a couple of features).

Click here for the full res jpg.

Destination Mercury. Click for larger. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

This is an image of the planet Mercury taken by the Messenger spacecraft yesterday (27 Sept) as it prepared to make a close pass by the planet tomorrow (29 Sept).

The closest approach to Mercury’s surface will be an astounding 142 miles (228 km). and will occur at 17:55 EDT tomorrow afternoon.  The flyby will be sure to provide some fantastic observations and data and leaving us to want more and for that we will have to wait until 2011 when Messenger is put into orbit around Mercury and starts its main mission.

Messenger is taking a circuitous route to get into orbit around Mercury traveling about 4,900 million miles (yes 4.9 billion miles), utilizing gravity assists from Earth, Venus and Mercury to arrive successfully.

To read more about the journey check this page: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/mission_design.html
And the mission on this page:  http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/index.html

I can’t wait to see the results of the flyby!  Stay tuned as they used to say.

…in the big picture of things that is?

It’s little wonder that all I can do is shake my head when I’m watching the news.

Here’s the video link.

Cassini provides us with a unique look at Saturn. Click for a slightly larger version (full res link below). Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Cassini provides us with another unique look at Saturn.

Click here for a full res version from NASA.

The Cassini press release:

Rhea joins other Saturnian moons in casting a shadow on the rings in this image taken as the planet approached its August 2009 equinox.

From the middle left to upper right of the image, the moon’s long shadow can be seen crossing several rings and features: the A ring, the Encke Gap, the outer A ring, the wide Roche Division and the thin F ring.

The larger shadow of the planet cuts across the rings in the lower right of the image. The night side of the planet is dimly illuminated here by ringshine, the southern hemisphere more so than the north. The excess brightness in the lower left of the image is lens flare, an artifact resulting from light being scattered within the camera optics.

Read more »

This beautiful image is a color-enhanced view of Ganymede.  Large enough to be considered a planet in its own right, it orbits Jupiter instead of the sun.

DLR, JPL, NASA, Galileo Project (Enhanced color)

Discovered by Galileo on January 13, 1610, Ganymede is the largest moon in to solar system.  The 7th moon out from Jupiter, Ganymede is the only satellite in the solar system known to possess a magnetosphere (although it is lost in Jupiter’s magnetic field).  First thought to have no atmosphere, discoveries made by the Hubble Space Telescope point to the existence of a thin oxygen atmosphere including (among other things) atomic hydrogen and ozone.

Sharing an interesting orbital resonance with Europa and Io, for every orbit of Ganymede, Europa orbits twice and Io orbits four times.  The relationship of the three moons in their orbits is called a Laplace Resonance.  This complicated relationship is self-correcting and extremely stable

Animation of the Laplace Resonance

Credit:  Splarka (Public Domain)

Ganymede has a larger diameter than the planet Mercury, but only about half its mass.  It has the highest mass of any of the solar system’s moons; about twice the mass of the Earth’s moon.  Believed to be composed of about equal parts of a rocky material and water (mostly ice), its exact composition is unknown.  Ganymede’s surface is extensively cratered, with grooves and ridges believed to be tectonic (relating to forces of movement below the surface).  Ganymede has polar caps, probably composed of water frost.

One of Ganymede’s most prominent features is a large dark area called the Galileo Regio (not a typo, it’s r-e-g-i-o), which contain numerous concentric grooves.  You can see it here in the upper right of this mosaic:

NASA/JPL, Voyager 2

One last look at Ganymede is this true color image, which is perhaps the most beautiful of all:

NASA/JPL Galileo Spacecraft