Space WebSite Frontpage
Information on Selected Comets
The image shown is a view of the nucleus of Comet Halley taken by the Giotto spacecraft. Below is a table of information on selected comets, and at the bottom of the page are comments on the comets.
The science team that oversees the imaging system on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has released the highest resolution near-global topographic map of the moon ever created.
This new topographic map, from Arizona State University in Tempe, shows the surface shape and features over nearly the entire moon with a pixel scale close to 100 meters (328 feet). A single measure of elevation (one pixel) is about the size of two football fields placed side-by-side.
Jupiter, long settled in its position as the fifth planet from our sun, was a rolling stone in its youth. Over the eons, the giant planet roamed toward the center of the solar system and back out again, at one point moving in about as close as Mars is now. The planet's travels profoundly influenced the solar system, changing the nature of the asteroid belt and making Mars smaller than it should have been. These details are based on a new model of the early solar system developed by NAI scientists at the Virtual Planetary Laboratory, the Goddard Center for Astrobiology, and their colleagues. Their paper appears in a recent issue of Nature.
Our solar system's ringed giant has been a consistent source of surprises for 400 years
Galileo's Saturn: Galileo wasn't sure what he was seeing when he first spotted the rings of Saturn in 1610. He made the lower sketch of what he called Saturn's arms in 1616.
Galileo Galilei stumbled across one of the great beauties of our solar system when he turned his telescope to Saturn in 1610.
Unfortunately, his telescope wasn't powerful enough to allow him to really appreciate it.
Thought for centuries to be a perfect sphere like the other planets, Galileo found Saturn had a squashed look when compared to the other planets.
In general, theists attribute the origin of the universe to some sort of transcendent, intelligent Designer. Atheists envision a natural, undirected process by which universes spring into existence spontaneously. Prior to the 20th century most atheists believed the universe was eternal. This changed however as discoveries throughout the 20th Century rendered that view untenable. Einstein’s theory of gravity (which has been thoroughly validated by extensive experimental confirmation) and Hubble’s astronomical observations preclude an eternal universe. We now know beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe began at some point in the finite past.
