Solar System
Mercury’s Ready For Its Close-Up, Mr. MESSENGER
Are you ready for a good close look at Mercury? At an incredible 5 meters per pixel, this is one of…
Cassini’s View of Another Pale Blue Dot
When you hear the words "pale blue dot" you're probably reminded of the famous quote by Carl Sagan inspired by…
Mercury Shrinking: the First Rock from the Sun Contracted More than Once Thought
Whatever Mercury's did to trim down its waistline has worked better than anyone thought -- the innermost planet in our…
If the Moon Were Only One Pixel: a Scale Model of the Solar System
One of my favorite pet peeves is the inability of conventional models to accurately convey the gigantic scale of the…
NEOWISE Spots a “Weirdo” Comet
NASA's NEOWISE mission -- formerly known as just WISE -- has identified the first comet of its new near-Earth object…
Playing Marbles With The Planets
We've all seen charts showing the relative sizes of planets and moons compared to each other, which are cool to…
Why Europa?
Forget Mars, the place we really want to go looking for life is Jupiter's moon Europa. Dr. Mike Brown, a…
Where is Earth Located?
You've probably heard the saying “everything’s relative”. When you consider our place in the Universe, everything really is relative. I’m…
Where Did Earth’s Water Come From?
Anyone who's ever seen a map or a globe easily knows that the surface of our planet is mostly covered…
Astronomy Cast Ep. 333: When Worlds Collide
Just take a look at the surface of the Moon and you can see it experienced a savage beating in…