Space

This wasnre seeing is an actual mushroom cloud.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a gifted photographer. Below, see a photograph made on February 19, showing at least four avalanches (or debris falls) at the Martian North Pole. The camera aboard the orbiting satellite is called the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiement—otherwise cutely known as HiRISE. (Scientist/Artists back here on Earth add colors to the images to make them more media friendly.) While the avalanche images are amazing, more breathtaking in my opinion is the shot that

This time of year all of us who live in New York quietly bite our lips and try to push through the crowds of tourists who come to enjoy the holiday season with us. Here’s another reason the city sucks this week: The light here prevents us from seeing the night sky well, thus depriving us of a close encounter with the Mars. This week, the Earth’s orbit will bring it the closer to the red planet than it has for many years; the next best viewing won’t come again until 2016.

Yet another astonishing satellite picture has been released--but this one doesn't show distant galaxies. This heavenly body is, of course, our own planet, as captured in high-definition video footage by the Japanese Kaguya satellite. The satellite was launched in September and is orbiting to moon to study its origins and to search for possible future manned landing sites. I'll definitely be on the lookout for more of these images. This one is reminiscent of the famous photograph made by astronau

In the last week or so I've been seeing a lot of satellite photos from outer space labeled Why this is only happening now, I don't know. But I ain't complaining. Here you see two high-res images of Mars, taken by NASA's HIRISE camera. The photo above looks like a high-altitude shot of Malibu, but it's actually a shot Mars's 96-mile wide Holden Crater. Below you see the blue dunes (blue dunes on the Red Planet--who knew?) in a region of northern Mars. This area is actually one of the places scien

It's never a bad idea to start the day by viewing an image that just makes your jaw drop. This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released yesterday, shows the any rate, this is some picture.--David Schonauer

I was going through my RSS feeds and saw this image. I am a real pushover when it comes to satellite photography of the distant heavens--it's one of the things that makes me happy I am living at this moment in history. (An iPhone would be nice, too.)This photo shows the star Mira, which lies about 420 light years away from Earth in the constellation Cetus. Mira is a well known star, but until it was photographed by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer space telescope, which observes ultraviolet ligh