These are a couple of great images from many years ago, taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it passed Jupiter. The first, in dramatic black & white, shows the moon Europa (with its subsurface ocean) passing in front of Jupiter’s turbulent clouds below, including the Great Red Spot on the left. It kind of looks like a Van Gogh painting, but it’s very real.
When Pluto was first discovered, it wasn’t known if it had any moons, and it was already a tiny world itself, smaller than Mercury (which doesn’t have any moons). As of last year however, five moons have been found orbiting Pluto! Now a new study announced today suggests that there may be up to ten more little moons or moonlets keeping Pluto company in the outer fringes of the solar system.
The analysis results of the first-ever rock drilling on Mars, by the Curiosity rover, were announced today by NASA at a press briefing in Washington. The new findings indicate that ancient Mars, at least in this area, was habitable and could have supported some form of life.
Read MoreCuriosity rover finds ancient Mars was suitable for life
This is a beautiful montage showing sunlight reflecting off lakes on two different worlds. A water lake (of course) on Earth and a methane lake …
For those who wonder about alien worlds out there, this is an exciting time of discovery. The number of exoplanets found so far is now well into the thousands and rapidly growing. The one downside – if you can call it that – is that these planets, with just a few exceptions, have been discovered by methods other than direct imaging. So there are still precious few actual photos of any of these far-off worlds. But a new “extreme” telescope is set to start changing that.
Read MoreGemini Planet Imager: new telescope will photograph distant worlds