Titan Touchdown

The Apollo 14 Command Module “Kitty Hawk”, on display at the Apollo Saturn V Center at KSC.

Image credit: Erik Hess

What are comets made of?

Cameras, cameras, and more cameras. Cameras!

Johannes Hevelius, Cometographia (Danzig, 1668), Fig. L

Saturn,cassini

Saturn in Infrared from Cassini

open parachute during tests for Mars Science Laboratory

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is such a crazy, turbulent storm (the largest known storm in the universe) that it creates sound waves that travel hundreds of miles up and actually heat the planet’s upper atmosphere.

I repeat: sound waves are heating Jupiter’s atmosphere. The area above the Spot is a thousand degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the surrounding atmosphere.

Here’s the journal paper. Here’s our story.

Image credit: Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA