Before we go interstellar, a digression with reference to yesterday's post, which looked at how we manipulate image data to draw out the maximum amount of information. I had mentioned the image widely regarded as the first photograph, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's 'View from the Window at Le Gras.' Centauri Dreams regular William Alschuler pointed out that this image is in fact a classic example of what I'm talking about. For without serious manipulation, it's impossible to make out what you're seeing. Have a look at the original and compare it to the image in yesterday's post, which has been processed to reveal the underlying scene. Image: New official image of the first photograph in 2003, minus any manual retouching. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's View from the Window at Le Gras. c. 1826. Gernsheim Collection Harry Ransom Center / University of Texas at Austin. Photo by J. Paul Getty Museum. And here again is the processed image, a much richer experience. The...

As I did after yesterday's post, I occasionally get requests for pictures of objects in natural color, as opposed to significantly enhanced images (at various wavelengths) designed to tease out structure or detail. Here are Pluto and Charon as seen by New Horizons' LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager), with color data supplied by the Ralph instrument. The images in this composite are from July 13 and 14 and according to JHU/APL, "...portray Pluto and Charon as an observer riding on the spacecraft would see them." For those interested, Jenna Garrett wrote a fine piece for WiReD last summer called What We're Really Looking at When We Look at Pluto that goes into the instrumentation aboard New Horizons and discusses the philosophical issues separating what we see from what is really there. Let me quote briefly from this: It's not hard for a photographer to understand why you'd question actually seeing Pluto—the same question has nagged photographers since Nicéphore...

Keeping up with a site like this can be a daunting task, especially when intriguing papers can pop up at any time and announcements of new finds by our spacecraft come in clusters. But site maintenance itself can be tricky. Recently Centauri Dreams regular Tom Mazanec wrote in with a project to be added to the links on the home page and before long, with my encouragement, he had sent a number of solid suggestions on exoplanet projects both Earth- and space-based, most of which have now been added. My thanks to Tom and all those who have at various times caught a broken link or added a suggestion for new links or stories. We begin the week looking at work discussed at the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Maryland, starting with the continuing bounty coming in from New Horizons. I always like to quote Alan Stern, because as principal investigator for New Horizons, he is not only its chief spokesman but the guiding force that saw this mission become a reality. And I think he's...

Back in the days when Clyde Tombaugh was using a blink comparator to search for 'Planet X,' finding a new object in the outer Solar System was highly unusual. Uranus had been found in 1781, Neptune in 1846, and I suppose I should add Ceres in 1801, although it's a good deal closer than the other two. The real point is that the Solar System seemed straightforward in Clyde Tombaugh's day. There were eight planets and an asteroid belt. It wouldn't be until 1943 that Kenneth Edgeworth argued that the outer system might have 'a very large number of comparatively small bodies,' with Gerard Kuiper publishing his own speculations in 1951. Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik first described what we now know as the Oort Cloud in 1932, with Jan Oort, a Dutch astronomer, reviving the idea in 1950. The Oort Cloud was a way to explain why comets behave the way they do. Oort believed that there must be a cometary 'reservoir' far away from the Sun -- he chose 20,000 AU as a likely range because of the...

Another surprise from New Horizons, in a year which will surely see a few more before it ends. After all, we have a long flow of data ahead as the spacecraft continues to return the information it gathered during the July flyby of Pluto/Charon. Now we focus on Charon and the crater being called Organa, which produced an anomaly when scientists studied the highest resolution infrared compositional scan of the moon available. This crater and some of the surrounding materials show infrared absorption at about 2.2 microns, indicating frozen ammonia. Not far away on Charon's Pluto-facing hemisphere is Skywalker crater, which under infrared scrutiny shows the same composition as the rest of Charon's surface. Here water ice -- not ammonia -- dominates. As this JHU/APL news release notes, ammonia absorption was first detected on Charon as far back as 2000, but what we're seeing here is unusually concentrated. In any case, why is Organa so different from Skywalker and the rest of Charon's...

No one interested in the prospects for life on other worlds should take his or her eyes off Europa for long. We know that its icy surface is geologically active, and that beneath it is a global ocean. While water ice is prominent on the surface, the terrain is also marked by materials produced by impacts or by irradiation. Keep in mind the presence of Io, which ejects material like ionized sulfur and oxygen that, having been swept up in Jupiter’s magnetosphere, eventually reaches Europa. Irradiation can break molecular bonds to produce sulfur dioxide, oxygen and sulfuric acid. And we're learning that local materials can be revealed by geology. A case in point is a new paper that looks at infrared data obtained with the adaptive optics system at the Keck Observatory. The work of Mike Brown, Kevin Hand and Patrick Fischer (all at Caltech, where Fischer is a graduate student), suggests that the best place to look for compounds indicative of life would be in the jumbled areas of Europa...

We now pivot from Dysonian SETI to the ongoing exploration of our own system, where lately there have been few dull moments. Today the Cassini Saturn orbiter will make its deepest dive ever into the plume of ice, water vapor and organic molecules streaming out of four major fractures (the 'Tiger Stripes') at Enceladus' south polar region. The plume is thought to come from the ocean beneath the moon's surface ice, and while Cassini is not able to detect life, it is able to study molecular hydrogen levels and more massive molecules including organics. Understanding the hydrothermal activity taking place on Enceladus helps us explore the possible habitability of the ocean for simple forms of life. Image: This artist's rendering showing a cutaway view into the interior of Saturn's moon Enceladus. NASA's Cassini spacecraft discovered the moon has a global ocean and likely hydrothermal activity. A plume of ice particles, water vapor and organic molecules sprays from fractures in the moon's...