Pluto: not a planet

A lot of folks were upset and confused when Pluto was demoted from it's planetary status a few years ago. This video makes a nice comparison of Pluto's demotion with Ceres, which was also a planet for a while in the 1800s until astronomers found many more small bodies in nearby orbits, eventually calling the whole bunch of them asteroids. Same story with Pluto. Astronomers discovered many more Kuiper belt objects out there beyond Neptune, including one that's bigger than Pluto (Eris).

The New Horizons spacecraft is on its way to Pluto to break the bad news.



Plus, Pluto is really small.

They Might Be Giants

The Asian Eclipse on July 22

I can't understand what they're saying, but I can pretty much figure it out. They're saying "Wow, that's awesome!" This was filmed in the southern islands of Japan. This was the longest solar eclipse of the 21st century.

Kaguya's Last Orbit

Japan's Kaguya spacecraft crashed into the Moon last week, as planned. Officially named the Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE), the spacecraft was given the nickname Kaguya after the princess in the Japanese folklore story The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Pictured above is a movie taken by Kaguya during the last orbit of its twenty-month lunar mission. A desolate, hilly, and cratered terrain passes underneath as the spacecraft barely clears a few peaks. At the movie's end, the spacecraft disappears into darkness near Gill crater. Robotic SELENE carried thirteen scientific instruments and two HDTV cameras.

Atlantis and the Sun

This photo was taken on Tuesday (May 12th) from Florida, and shows Atlantis in space, crossing in front of the sun on its way to rendezvous with Hubble.

The photographer used a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera.

Image Credit: NASA/Thierry Legault

Atlantis liftoff

Atlantis is away! 18 miles high, 23 miles downrange, and 2,500 m.p.h in 2 minutes. I don't care who you are, that just kicks ass.

Off to fix and upgrade the Hubble telescope. Good luck Atlantis!

Atlantis Ready To Visit Hubble

The Space Shuttle Atlantis is preparing to visit and service the Hubble Space Telescope, one last time. The launch is scheduled for Monday, May 11th. Good luck Atlantis!

Astronauts are cooler than ever.

Mars Science Lab Chute is Ready

The parachute for the Mars Science Laboratory, which will be launched in 2011, recently passed its tests in the world's largest wind tunnel at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. The two engineering types at the bottom provide scale. MSL will be 9 feet long and weigh almost a ton, so, ya know, it needs a big chute. By comparison, Spirit and Opportunity are about 5 feet long and weigh just under 400 lbs.

Dominos, and then some

Kinetic sculpture gone wild! This is from Tim Fort:

I bet it took this guy over an hour to set this up. Or 400 hours, maybe. No really, who has the time for this?? But given the chance, who among us wouldn't do this? Nobody!

Earthrise

The Japanese Kayuga spacecraft, in orbit around the Moon since 2007, captured this high-definition video of the Earth rising. Nice.

2 Views of the Same Space

Here are two looks across the gulf between the Earth and our Moon. From the perspective of our day-to-day experience, the 240,000 miles separating these two worlds is an enormous distance (I have "only" 90,000 miles on my pickup truck), but from an interstellar perspective, it is a tiny distance. This is our galactic back yard. The views are from the space shuttle in Earth orbit, looking across at the Moon, and from the Japanese lunar spacecraft Kayuga, at the Moon, looking back at Earth.

Lord of the Rings and 4 Moons

Quadruple transit of Saturnian moons from Hubble: Titan (the orange one), Mimas, Enceladus (the one with ice volcanoes), and Dione. Saturn's rings will get tilted less and less over the next few months, and Earth will cross the ring plane in September.