Are the White Spots on Ceres Producing Afternoon Haze?
In short… a faint cloud seems to settle into Occator Crater at the same time every Ceren day, most probably water vapor being emitted from the white spots at the bottom of the crater.
Jul 252015
Jul 242015
Jul 222015
… with Microsoft Paint.
Jul 222015
This got lost in all the excitement over New Horizons/Pluto a week ago. But July 15 was the 50th anniversary of the Mariner 4 probe’s flyby of the planet Mars. Not only was this the first flyby of Mars, this was the *end* of “Mars.” prior to Mariner 4, people could at least imagine that the atmosphere, while thin, could support life, that there would be some amount of liquid water on Mars, perhaps even vegetation and canals. But Mariner 4 showed that Mars had an atmosphere not 1/4 as thick as Earth’s, but more like 1/150th as thick, that there was no possibility of liquid water (and little enough frozen water), and no vegetation or canals. More than a few science fiction authors of the day were a bit disappointed.
Jul 172015
Flying over Pluto…
And the best view we’re going to get of the moon Nix:
As an aside… I noticed when I went to add this image to the blog post that it was dated August, 2012. Almost certainly just a flub. But prepare for the conspiracy theories…
Jul 152015
The closest-pass images are starting to come in.
The tiny moon Hydra:
Charon:
And Pluto in closeup:
And this:
Views of Pluto Through the Years
Jul 142015
I have a number of ideas for different tales to go into Pax Orionis, including standard third person narratives, bits of memoirs, articles, interviews, technical descriptions, etc. Some of them I’ve started poking away at. Because why not, below are the opening paragraphs of four such yarns. Some I have little more than what’s here, others are good long chunks. None are done. The titles are just placeholders for the moment,
Jul 142015
Telemetry is coming in from New Horizons. Everything is nominal; seems Cthulhu didn’t eat it at closest approach.
Jul 142015
Jul 142015
New Horizons has gone past Pluto. Before closest approach, it radioed home one last photo; it then went into “can’t talk now, busy sciencing” mode for several hours, where the onboard computer went into full-time data gathering and recording mode. Won’t hear from it again until 8:34 PM eastern time, at which time a “ping” should be heard if the craft survived.
So, this *might* be the very last photo of Pluto… or it might be the last photo before the Really Good Photos start pouring in early tomorrow.
