Astronomy Picture of the Week – Rings of Uranus
This series of images of the rings of Uranus were taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. They were taken at different times when the rings were facing the Earth at slightly different angles. In the third image, the edge-on rings appear as two spikes above and below the planet.
Astronomy Picture of the Week – Io Moon Of Jupiter
Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. It is the innermost of Jupiter’s four major moons also known as the Galilean moons, named after their discoverer. Io’s surface is constantly under construction. The volcanic eruptions quickly reshape every part of the moon’s crust, so that a map of Io wouldn’t stay accurate for quite long. This image is a composite of many photos taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1996. The surface of Io has drastically changed many times since then. I wonder what it would look like today… Image Credit: The Galileo Project, JPL, NASA
Astronomy Picture of the Week – Planet Uranus with Moons
This is a photo montage of Uranus and five of it’s largest moons. The photos were taken separately by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. The moons, from largest to smallest as they appear here, are Ariel, Miranda, Titania, Oberon and Umbriel. When Voyager 2 visited the planet, it discovered 10 new smaller moons and took close-up pictures of its ring system. Image Credit: NASA/JPL
Mimas And Iapetus, Two Odd Moons Of Saturn
Saturn has a lot of moons. Two of them are really odd, and bear a striking resemblance to the Death Star from the Star Wars movies. Mimas has a crater of approximately the same scale as the one on the Death Star. Iapetus also has large craters, but the resemblance lies in its equatorial ridge. Mimas compared to the Death Star from Star Wars Mimas’ Crater Mimas, the 20th largest moon in the solar system, has a huge crater Herschel named after the discoverer of the moon. The crater’s diameter is 130 km, which is almost a third of the moon’s own diameter. Herschel’s walls are over 5 km high…
