October 2009 - Posts

Space Missions in the Last 50 Years
Thursday, October 15, 2009 1:29 PM

National Geograhic has mapped close to 200 space explorations missions in the picture below. Most have been to our closest neighbors, Venus and Mars and our Moon.

Click image to view full size.

by Amaryllis Place | with no comments

Filed under: Moon, Inner Planets, Outer Planets, Asteroid Belt

A New Ring Discovered Around Saturn
Wednesday, October 07, 2009 1:34 PM

Image from NASA

A gigantic ring has recently been discovered around Saturn. Most of the material in the ring starts about 3.7 million miles from the planet and extends about another 7.4 million miles. This thing is HUGE. It is made up of ice and dust particles and is not visible with visible light telescopes. The cool ring particles were detected by an infrared telescope. Phoebe, one of Saturn's moons, orbits within the ring, going in the same direction as the ring. All of the other moons and rings of Saturn orbit in the opposite direction.

by Amaryllis Place | 1 comment(s)

Filed under: Saturn