Selections from The International Year of Astronomy poster series by Simon C. Page

The HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) has been documenting Mars from above since 2006. It uses false-color images to see features of the planet’s surface more clearly. Check out its archives for a strangely beautiful tour of an exotic place.

Planet, sun and moon pendants from the Edelstein Metalsmiths Etsy store.

Brightly colored science-inspired jewelry by Gracie

Fascinating land formations on Mars

Can’t. Stop. Looking. 

Top: The first color movie of Jupiter from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows what it would look like to peel the entire globe of Jupiter, stretch it out on a wall into the form of a rectangular map, and watch its atmosphere evolve with time. The brief movie clip spans 24 Jupiter rotations between Oct. 31 and Nov. 9, 2000.

Bottom: This brief movie shows counterclockwise atmospheric motion around Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. The clip was made from blue-filter images taken with the narrow-angle camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during seven separate rotations of Jupiter between Oct. 1 and Oct. 5, 2000. 

Recommended:  Wired’s The Solar System’s Most Spectacular Geology Revealed by 50 Years of Robotic Exploration

Planet necklaces from the ShopGibberish Etsy store.

If you found an iPad under the tree or an iTunes gift card in your stocking, make the most of it by getting over 850 images just as beautiful as these in our Cassini HD app for iPad. Or Angry Birds. That’s fun too.

These are some of the stunning space photos assembled by Michael Benson for his gorgeous coffee table book Planetfall: New Solar System Visions.

About the book:

Thanks to the photographic output of a small squadron of interplanetary spacecraft, we have awakened to the beauty and splendor of the solar system. Since Michael Benson’s masterful book Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, new, more powerful cameras in probes with greatly improved maneuverability have traversed the wheeling satellites of Jupiter; roamed the boulder-strewn red deserts of Mars; studied Saturn’s immaculate rings; and shown us our own ravishing Earth, a blue-white orb with a disturbingly thin atmosphere, as it plunges deeper into ecological crisis. These new images are the subject of Benson’s Planetfall, a truly revelatory book that uses its large page size to reproduce the greatest achievements in contemporary planetary photography as never before.

Sol Explorer for iPhone and iPad by Reason Interactive is a super cool app that lets you zip around the solar system in your own spaceship and learn about the planets and their moons in a fun and interactive way. It’s got impressive graphics and a neat video demonstrating the scale of the planets. It’s exactly the kind of interactive eye candy that makes apps so much fun.

Brian of Reason Interactive happens to be a friend of mine and sometimes friendship  comes with perks. In this case, he’s offering it for half price ($0.99) for today (Sunday, Oct. 21) only. 

NASA launched the Cassini orbiter on October 15, 1997, to explore Saturn, its rings, and system of moons. Fifteen years later, it’s still thrilling the world with wonderfully impossible images from a billion miles away. Thinx is honoring this anniversary by offering its Cassini HD iPad app for half price, just $0.99. Featuring more than 840 stunning images, Cassini HD is the perfect way to see the greatest highlights of this amazing mission.

It’s almost here (unless you’re far enough east). The Cassini HD app for iPad is arriving in the iTunes app store Saturday, Sept 15 and it will be FREE for one day only. Find out more about it here.

Illustrations by Moonrunner

About Moonrunner:

Moonrunner is primarily known for its science-based illustrations, especially in such fields as astro-physics, cosmology, dark energy, black holes, the solar system and such stellar phenomena as quasars, star nurseries and pulsars. We have worked with Stephen Hawking, as well as with the scientist/authors of the National Geographic and Scientific American magazines, and also those publishing with Dorling Kindersley, Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Weldon Owen.

Click on the images to see what they represent.

To celebrate the upcoming release of our new Cassini HD iPad app, I will be posting my favorite images from it all week. These natural color images capture Saturn in all its soft-toned splendor.

Cassini HD will be released in the iTunes store on Saturday, Sept. 15. Take advantage of our special release offer and get it for free that first day only.