Best Astronomy Photos of 2003

All frosting, no cake; if you want the text of the story behind the picture, look for the “return to main story” link at the bottom of these pages. Without further ado: #10, Jupiter from Cassini (and even this photo is a poor version – go here and take the time to download the whole awesome thing)…#9, Mercury Transits Sun From Africa…#8, Mystery Contrail Captured by Skateboarder…#7, The Universe from WMAP…#6, Extrasolar planet HD209458b being fried by its sun, HD209458 from artist conception of various data…#5, Red Moon Eclipse from North America…#4, V838 Monocerotis from Hubble (my personal favorite)… #3, Largest Recorded Solar Flare From SOHO…#2, Mars from Hubble…#1, Earth as seen from Mars via Mars Global Surveyor. As noted, “This is without question one of the worst pictures of Earth ever taken. And it has absolutely no scientific value. But the location of the photographer — a robot orbiting Mars — made it one of the most popular space images of the year.” My wish for the new year is that human eyes see our blurry blue blob in the beyond like this one day soon.

3 thoughts on “Best Astronomy Photos of 2003”

  1. Aaack! The “Back To Main Story” link is a javascript “history.back()” and doesn’t help a bit in this situation. (Gosh darn it, if I wanted to use the “back” button I can find it myself in my broswer menu!! Javascripts that presume like this are one of my pet peeves!!!)

    The story has a page for each image, so the links are:

    1. Earth from Mars (and story intro)
    2. Mars by Hubble
    3. Largest Solar Flare on Record
    4. Hubble Light Echo
    5. Lunar Eclipse
    6. Incredible Shrinking Planet
    7. Measuring the Cosmos
    8. Stumping the Experts
    9. Mercury Transits Sun
    10. Jupiter from Cassini

    And gorgeous they are, too. I think my fave is the Mercury transit.

  2. I thought this was cool: back in 2001 Brian Tung did some image-manipulation to approximate what the view of Earth from Mars would look like. It is pretty similar to the actual photo! Tung’s graphic shows a little more detail than the Global Surveyor photo, I assume because it’s meant to simulate using a telescope from the surface of Mars, while the Global Surveyor used optics that were optimized for closer range viewing. I wonder why the Global Surveyor photo shows so much more green?

  3. I didn’t catch this because I went through all the main text pages first so they WERE in my cache – thus the “back to main story” links worked for me.

    Thanks, SW!!!

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