Planetary advent

mathilde Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society blog, inspired by The Big Picture, has started her own solar system advent calendar: every day she’ll reveal a new cool picture of a solar system object. It’s spread out over many posts, but she has links to the previous pictures in each one, so it’s easy to navigate.

And if you don’t already, you should follow Emily on Twitter.

December 4th, 2009 9:37 AM Tags: advent calendar, Emily Lakdawalla, The Planetary Society
by Phil Plait in Astronomy, Cool stuff | 4 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

4 Responses to “Planetary advent”

1. whb03 Says:
December 4th, 2009 at 1:12 pm

THIS is cool. Thanks Phil!
2. Sili Says:
December 4th, 2009 at 9:49 pm

Completely off-topic, but Emily’s mention of the dearth of mission to Uranus and Neptune got me thinking: When will the next opportunity to hit both planets in one short à la Voager II occur?
3. Plutonium being from Pluto Says:
December 5th, 2009 at 3:43 am

@ 2. Sili Says:

Completely off-topic, but Emily’s mention of the dearth of mission to Uranus and Neptune got me thinking: When will the next opportunity to hit both planets in one shot à la Voyager II occur?

Not for a very lo-oong time. I don’t know exactly how long but the Voyager II “grand tour” alignment was, I’m pretty sure, a very rare and not oft repeated one.

Thanks BA & Emily that’s another excellent astronomy advent calendar I’ll have to follow day by day! Cheers!
4. Sili Says:
December 7th, 2009 at 5:35 am

Thanks, I thought as much.

I just wondered if the outer giants don’t actually move so slowly that thirty-odd years don’t really make a difference.

On the other hand, Jupiter must be the most important in terms of getting a lift, and that’s positively whooshing around in comparison.

Anyway, I just heard Emily on the 365DoA and apparently there aren’t even any current plans for launch in the next decade. Which I guess isn’t too bad, since there’s no Plutonium to run the damn things anyway.

But I hope that I get to see orbiters around Uranus and Neptune.

About Bad Astronomy

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.

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