ROB-BLOG: Solar Sistem (150 pics)

II. Venus

Through UV and orange filters:

From the Soviet Venera 13 lander:

From Venera 14:

This is a perspective mosaic of Venera images , which shows roughly what a human being would see on the surface of Venus:

III. Earth

Can you spot Earth in this Voyager 2 image taken beyond Pluto?

Luna

Sabine and Ritter Craters from Apollo 11 (Orbit)

IV. Near-Earth Objects (NEOs)

There are only two NEOs that have clear, interesting, photographic images at the moment. There are tons more that either have blurry, mundane images, computer-generated images based on radar data, or just specks on a starfield.

25143 Itokawa

433 Eros

(No, this is not a joke - an asteroid named Eros looks like this...)

V. Mars

Northern ice cap:

Either sunrise or sunset (sources differ):

Earth from the Martian surface:

Phobos

Deimos

Size comparison of Phobos and Deimos (this is not one photo, but two separate ones scaled and joined):

VI. Main Asteroid Belt & Comets

Some of these images are marginal, because we have not yet sent dedicated probes to Main Belt objects and have to rely on the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories in most cases. Superior images were obtained only by probes destined for outer planets passing through the Main Belt. In the case of comets, they may have been imaged from a point closer than the Main Belt, but I include them arbitrarily because their orbits are usually too eccentric to categorize regionally. There are tens of thousands of cataloged objects for which there are no clear, close-up images.

243 Ida (and its satellite Dactyl, in first image)

Dactyl

951 Gaspra

Size comparison of 951 Gaspra, Phobos, and Deimos:

Size comparison of 951 Gaspra (right) with 243 Ida (left):

253 Mathilde

A comparison of the size of Washington D.C. to 253 Mathilde:

A comparison of the size of 253 Mathilde and 433 Eros:

2867 Šteins

5535 Annefrank

Ceres

This is the largest asteroid in the solar system (hence its being spherical), and possibly destined for human settlement. It's thus a scandal that we still don't have any decent images of it (though we're sending the Dawn probe, which will arrive in 2015). This is from Hubble:

4 Vesta

Comet Borrelly

Comet Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt" 2)

Comet Tempel 1

Planned collision of Deep Impact interceptor probe with Comet Tempel 1:

Deep Impact Collision with Comet Tempel 1

Halley's Comet

VII. Jupiter

South pole:

North pole:

With Europa:

With Ganymede:

Io and Europa transit:

Io transit:

Europa transit with Callisto in foreground:

Another Io transit:

From descender probe, inside upper layers of Jovian atmosphere:

Amalthea

Jupiter has dozens of moons, but we only have decent images of the Galilean satellites and a couple of the small, captured asteroid variety.

Thebe

Volcanic eruption:

Lava flow:

Europa

Ganymede

Black and white:

Ice hills:

Callisto

Black and white:

Size comparison of Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa:

VIII. Saturn

Eclipse:

Rings

Pan

As with Jupiter, most moons of Saturn are just asteroid rubble, so most have no images. However, there are many more that do have images thanks to the Cassini probe.

Daphnis

Notice that this moon causes waves in the rings to either side of it due to gravitational perturbation:

Atlas

Prometheus

Pandora

Epimetheus

The shadow of F Ring lies across it:

"Above" plane of rings, with Titan in the background:

Janus

In front of Saturn:

Janus, Prometheus, and rings:

Mimas

With Northern latitudes of Saturn in background (not rings, as it might appear due to ring shadows):

Partially eclipsing Dione:

Saturn in the background:

Ring plane in background:

Enceladus

Close-up of surface, as seen from an angle:

Outgassing:

Enceladus inside E Ring. Outgassing from Enceladus is thought to be responsible for the existence of that ring:

Enceladus and Dione (next 2 images):

Janus, Enceladus, and Tethys:

In front of Saturn:

Enceladus and Janus:

Tethys and Enceladus:

Tethys

Tethys and Dione:

Telesto

Calypso

Dione

Helene

Rhea

Titan

Infrared, showing surface features through the clouds (next 2 images):

Radar, showing coastlines and fjords along hydrocarbon lakes (next 2 images):

Surface:

Hyperion

False color:

Iapetus

Saturnshine - This is from the night side of Iapetus, seen only by the reflected light of Saturn. The streaks in the background are probably dust.

Phoebe

IX. Uranus

As there has never been a dedicated spacecraft sent to this planet, we can only rely on images from the Voyager 2 flyby and false-color images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In fact, there are no officially accepted plans to send spacecraft to either of the furthest outer planets in the foreseeable future. Hopefully that changes.

Some folks sympathize with Pluto, but I feel sympathy for this planet - it gets ignored because of the primary's plainness, and due to the giggle factor of its name. Maybe things would have been different if it had been given the Greek version of its name, "Oranos," rather than the Latinized spelling.

False color (next 3 images), from HST:

Rings (in monochrome visible light)

In front of Uranus:

Puck

Miranda

Ariel

Umbriel

Titania

Oberon

Size comparison of Uranus, Puck, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon:

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X. Neptune

Neptune and Triton:

Larissa

Proteus

Triton

XI. Kuiper Belt (pronounced "Kye-per," rhymes with "viper")

Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) are frigid ice worlds intersecting or beyond the orbit of Neptune, and tend to have relatively eccentric orbits. We have no clear images of any of the hundreds of known objects (astronomers expect there to be about 70,000), but there are vague images of the largest and brightest ones.

134340 Pluto

This is the best we've got so far, and it is in true color:

We also have false-color images of the Plutonian system, the first showing Pluto and Charon, and the second showing all four objects (as labeled):

There will be much better images of the Plutonian system when the New Horizons probe passes by in 2015.

Charon

Monochrome:

136108 Haumea

With its two satellites, Hi'iaka (top) and Namaka (bottom).

50000 Quaoar

136472 Makemake

Extended exposure, HST:

136199 Eris

Eris is both substantially larger and more massive than Pluto. In this extended exposure, it's seen with its satellite, Dysnomia:

Thus concludes our photo tour of the solar system.

A. Additional size comparison images

Sun, planets, and dwarf planets

Mercury, Venus (radar map), Earth, Mars

Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune

Size comparison of planets, Sun, and progressively larger stars up to the largest known

Jupiter and Galilean moons

Jupiter and Earth

Saturn and Moons

Saturn and Earth

Uranus and Earth

Neptune and Earth

Triton, Luna, and Earth

B. Orbital Charts

Solar system

Description: This chart helps us appreciate the true scale of the solar system. In the first panel, beginning at upper left, we see the inner solar system, with Jupiter included as a boundary (Jupiter is typically considered part of the outer solar system). Moving clockwise to the upper right panel, we telescope outward and see the original panel shrunk to just a small part of the outer solar system. The Kuiper Belt is shown, as is object 90377 Sedna at perihelion (closest approach to the Sun).

Continuing clockwise to the lower right panel, we once again telescope outward, and now the entire planetary part of the solar system has shrunk to a small set of concentric circles at one of the foci of Sedna's highly elliptical orbit. Then, telescoping outward again into the lower left and final panel, we see Sedna's orbit reduced to a tiny ellipse within the inner extent of the Oort Cloud.

The Oort Cloud - consisting mainly of comets and other small, icy bodies with extraordinarily long-period orbits - has poorly-defined boundaries, and it it considered a possibility that these clouds intersect between stars. Oort Cloud objects may therefore end up transferring from star to star over long time periods, or be thrown into the inner solar system.

Inner solar system + Jupiter

Description: Here we see a more detailed chart of the inner solar system and Jupiter, showing various asteroidal swarms. The "Greek" and "Trojan" swarms are asteroid groupings at Jupiter's stable solar Lagrange points, although both swarms are often referred to in shorthand as "Trojan asteroids" with the qualifier "leading" or "trailing" to denote which swarm is being referred to.