In recent days, there have been some really awesome, NASA pictures of the day.
This montage of planetary images was taken by spacecraft managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Included are (from top to bottom) images of Mercury, Venus, Earth (and moon), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The spacecraft responsible for these images are as follows:
1. The Mercury image was taken by Mariner 10,
2. The Venus image by Magellan,
3. T the Earth image by Galileo,
4. The Mars image by Viking, and
5. The Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were taken images by Voyager.Pluto is not shown as no spacecraft has yet visited it.
The inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, moon and Mars) are roughly to scale to each other; the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) are roughly to scale to each other.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL
One of a series, this image of Saturn was taken when the planet’s rings were at their maximum tilt of 27 degrees toward Earth. Saturn experiences seasonal tilts away from and toward the sun, much the same way Earth does. This happens over the course of its 29.5-year orbit. Every 30 years, Earth observers can catch their best glimpse of Saturn’s South Pole and the southern side of the planet’s rings. Between March and April 2003, researchers took full advantage to study the gas giant at maximum tilt, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to capture detailed images of Saturn’s Southern Hemisphere and the southern face of its rings.Image Credit: NASA and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)
Additionally NASA recently featured a really nice photo essay: Cities at night: the view from Space that started off with the following shot and had several other views of the Earth from space.
Really amazing stuff.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
