Tessera
Folgen

James Tuttle Keane

@jtuttlekeane.bsky.social

planetary scientist 🪐 science illustrator 🎨 trekkie 🖖 dog dad 🐶 Pasadena 🌹 views are my own 🏳️‍🌈 he/him

277 Posts2601 Follower331 Folgt
Don Davis@ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 17h ago

During the recent Total Solar Eclipse the South Korean Danuri spacecraft obtained a nice view of Earth from Lunar orbit with the Moons shadow just visible on Earth. Here is their image, with attribution added, my colorized version and the nearly simultaneous EPIC-DSCOVR image used for the color.

This is a reduced version of the photo released today by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. Earth is seen from Lunar orbit during the recent Total Solar eclipse. The Moon is barely showing shadows behind the sunlit surfaces, and the shadow of the Moon itself is just at the horizon, or perhaps 'Limb' better suits an orbital view. One very wide shadow shows a fuzzy edge on a distant rise. I added the attribution. This is my version of the Danuri Lunar orbiter photo, with color added. I combined their Earth photo with a color EPIC-DSCOVR image made at about the same time, rotated a little in 3D to better match the Danuri viewing angle for compositing. The sharpness of the B&W original is preserved with the DSCOVR full Earth photo mostly used for the color values. I also prefer this orientation with the foreground Moon at the bottom.This is the EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) image from the DSCOVR satellite made at close to the same time as the Danuri image, shown in reduced form but otherwise as released. The exposure is naturally for the sunlit Earth and clouds. The Moon shadow's wide peripheral zone of gradual darkening, the 'penumbra' is where the illumination decreases as more of the Sun is eclipsed. At this time the outermost shadow area was near the Great Lakes, from this perspective a circular zone of that radius thus surrounds the progressively underexposed zone around the Moon shadow. If the exposure were adjusted to define the actual umbra, or zone of totality, the resulting small black dot in the image , about 30 percent the size of the underexposed portion seen here, would be surrounded by the greatly overexposed fully sunlit rest of the world.
James Tuttle Keane@jtuttlekeane.bsky.social · last wk.

Stephanie Menten—there are some unusual pits and troughs on the satellites of the ice giants. Could thermal erosion—where (cryo)lava flows melt the substrate and leave a depression—be responsible? Modeling works for Triton; less so for Ariel, where tectonics may be required. #AOGS2026

A photograph of my notebook showing a sketch summary of Stephanie Menten’s talk at AOGS. Most of the sketch is summarizing how thermal erosion works with a series of cross sections. Top: a lava flow (in red) erupts on the surface and flows right. Middle: as the lava flows, the turbulent hot lava warms and melts the substrate. Bottom: as the melt cools, it can sink into the eroded depression left from the melting. The result is a pit or trough in the middle of the flow. Beneath this are some simple sketches of Uranus’s moon, Ariel, and Neptune’s moon, Triton. Both exhibit pits. Their modeling suggests this process may be effective on Triton, but less so on Ariel (where tectonics might need to help).
James Tuttle Keane@jtuttlekeane.bsky.social · last wk.

Christos Ntinos—Developing a new “super resolution” Cassini VIMS map of Enceladus. The map can provide insight about physical properties (grain size, crystallinity, etc.) which are useful for both science and future exploration—like the ESA L4 mission concept. #AOGS2026

A photograph of my notebook showing a sketch of Christos Ntinos’s talk at AOGS 2026. The sketch shows a render of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, with the Cassini spacecraft, flying by an imaging the surface with its hyper spectral VIMS instrument. The beam coming from Cassini is shown as a rainbow scanning the surface. On the left-hand side of insults, I’ve shown a false color version of the analysis which shows some interesting patterns associated with the tiger stripes. Beneath the render of Enceladus is a artist concept for the future ESA L4 mission that might one-day land on the surface. Here, I show it with the southern hemisphere of Saturn, peeking over the horizon, and interrupting Tiger stripe with jets coming out of it over to the right. 
James Tuttle Keane@jtuttlekeane.bsky.social · 2w ago

Shuang Yang—Chang’e 7 will land near the Moon’s south pole Shackleton crater later this year and deploy (via tether) a seismometer that is planned to survive for 8 years. This might be the first node of a long-lived *international* geophysical network! #AOGS2026

A photograph of my notebook showing a sketch of Shuang Yang (Chinese Academy of Science) talk at AOGS. It shows a low, oblique shot of the Chang’e 7 lander, landed on the Moon, as it lowers its seismometers (SP + VBB) to the surface of the Moon from the bottom of the lander. The seismometer will survive up to 8 years through use of an RHU.
James Tuttle Keane@jtuttlekeane.bsky.social · 2w ago

Ralph Lorenz—Huygens showed that Titan can be wet, even at low latitudes. As Dragonfly flies across Titan, the odds it’ll land in mud are low (<1%), and if so, the stickiness will be again to sticky wheat dough (and Dragonfly could still takeoff). #AOGS2026

A photograph of a sketch in my notebook summarizing Ralph Lorenz’s talk at AOGS2026. The pen and pencil sketch shows two spacecraft on the surface of Titan: Huygens and Dragonfly (loosely to scale). The two grey spacecraft sit on a rock littered orange surface with a yellow hazy sky behind them. Next to Hogan’s, I have a zoom in the regular showing how the acoustic sensor suggested that the soil was damp, with liquid sweating out of it. On the right, I show a little insect of some reel, analog dunes, which very rarely can have intradune lakes form in particular particularly rainy seasons. Situations such as this are predicted to be very rare for Titan, but the Dragonfly mission is planned to handle it.
Don Davis@ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 2w ago

51 years ago I painted a trio of Viking related works for NASA HQ including the widely reproduced one of the landing on Mars. I have reimagined the Landing portrayal in updated form using digital methods of visualization and painting. I chose the same angle but with reality replacing anticipation.

This oil painting portrays the Viking 1 landing on Mars, which appeared in countless publications. The story of this work is relayed in an earlier post and is shown here for comparison with the new portrayal of this very view, showing the event as it would have appeared. This 1975 anticipatory painting was done with oils on a gesso smoothed 16 X 20 canvas panel, using traditional art methods including a tracing paper guide featured earlier. This work shows in retrospect my ideal of the 'spirit of space art', showing something of a summary of what is known of the subject while conveying what it is about the subject's known or theorized attributes that I find visually compelling. The new digital painting updates that visual impression with one based on our current knowledge. The new digital work was also done at the same size as this one was for possible printing purposes, 16 by 20 inches at 300 DPI. #Sciart In 1976 the pair of Viking spacecraft orbiter/lander combos were sent to Mars. Before Viking, Mars was still largely a place of our imaginations, an unknown that we wrote stories about then studied from Earth and space. The dominance of cratered terrain on the portions of Mars photographed by Mariners 4, 6 and 7 gave an initially Lunar impression of that world, which changed during the development of the Viking lander after Mariner 9 revealed the planet. The first landing was aimed for a flat flood plain, judged as a decent place to search for life. The landing date was July 4, however the intended site appeared too rough for comfort in the high quality orbiter photos, causing the landing to wisely be delayed. A smoother site further 'down stream' was found using photo and radar data. The landing proceeded quite nominally, a magnificent achievement that apparently accounted for what it had to and made it the first time. The first photo from the surface was a look at a footpad to see how solid the 'footing' appeared. Then a moderate resolution panorama of the surroundings was obtained, first showing the rocks, hills, dunes-and bright sky. The latter was my biggest surprise as a space artist. The adjustments to the color balance of the later photos were gradually narrowed down. The ubiquitous dust is planet wide, suspended in the air and coloring the sky a luminous tan ochre. This digital painting shows the view a meter above the surface seeing the lander briefly kicking up dust less than a second before touchdown with the footpads 1.4 meters high. The landing rockets were designed with many nozzles to disturb the surroundings as little as possible. The nearby disturbed dust resembles in color that of the sky. We are 6 meters away from the center of the lander. field of view is 60 degrees, we are looking Northwest with the Sun and Earth off the frame to the left. This is a digital art update of the pre mission oil painting I did for NASA HQ 1n 1975. #Sciart
Casey Dreier@caseydreier.bsky.social · 2w ago

This is why I believe using Endurance-A's science goals are so important to consider in this study. If NASA wants to send a mission to the surface, and it consumes nuclear stockpiles, then let's make sure the science is worth the cost.

SpaceNews @spacenewsinc.bsky.social · 2w ago

Sending repurposed Mars rover to the moon could cost more than $1 billion Converting an engineering model of a Mars rover into an actual lunar rover could cost NASA more than $1 billion, an estimate strongly rejected by the agency’s administrator....

Sending repurposed Mars rover to the moon could cost more than $1 billion

Converting an engineering model of a Mars rover into an actual lunar rover could cost NASA more than $1 billion, an estimate strongly rejected by the agency’s administrator.

spacenews.com

James Tuttle Keane@jtuttlekeane.bsky.social · 2w ago

Episode 1 is of my friend’s new documentary about Pangea is out now on YouTube! youtu.be/RY8mipBWjyw?...

How the Formation of Pangea Changed the World

YouTube video by PBS Eons

youtu.be

James Tuttle Keane@jtuttlekeane.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hey #SDCC! You like geology and paleontology? Come see my friend @paleoparadox.bsky.social in their brand new PBS documentary about Pangea! Free premiere tomorrow (Saturday) at 10AM and 11AM. 🌋⚒️ digitalgym.org/movies/eons-...

The cover art for “Eons: Life and Death on Pangea.” The title is in a large white font across the poster, with an ancient creature and erupting volcano in the background.
Riding With Robots@ridingrobots.bsky.social · 3w ago

One of NASA's twin Mars-bound ESCAPADE spacecraft captured Earth and the Moon from 363K miles (584K km) away. In visible light, both appear as slim crescents. But switch to thermal infrared and it’s a different picture... 1/2

Against black space, Earth appears at left as a thin white-green crescent lit along its right edge. The Moon, slightly smaller and dimmer, sits at upper right as a matching tan crescent lit on the same side. Only a sliver of each world catches sunlight; the rest of both disks is lost in darkness.In infrared, Earth glows with heat represented by warm colors, while the Moon remains mostly dark.
Don Davis@ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 4w ago

I will show my Viking related art in a slow trickle over the next few days, as there is a fair amount of it and a new one is coming. This is a pre mission oil painting done for then USGS Astrogeology branch chief Jack McCauley, based on his anticipations of how the landing site could appear.

This mid 70s oil painting attempts to summarize a leading Astrogeologist's idea of what the surface of Mars in the general intended landing zone on a wide flood plain might look like. Jack McCauley familiarized me with his work in the coastal deserts of Peru and photos of the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, places where likely Mars like surface features could most be seen on Earth. Streamlined 'gravel bars' preserve an ancient wash, with blowing dust filling some of the deeper winding channels. Small impact craters continued to form since the climate dried up. The dark sky suggests the anticipated visual appearance at the known atmospheric density, of course not accounting tor the eternal dust pall that actually ended up brightening the daytime sky. The lander was based on photos of models available at the time. #Sciart
Elizabeth Tasker@elizabethtasker.bsky.social · last mo.

The English press release with the first images of asteroid Torifune captured by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft is now live! (I translated, the ISAS PR lead checked it while practically running from the press conference, and someone at JAXA HQ stayed late enough to upload 😆 HIGH-FIVES ALL AROUND!)

JAXA | Hayabusa2 captures images of asteroid Torifune

Get information on the Hayabusa2 captures images of asteroid Torifune. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) performs various activities related to aerospace as an organization, from basic res...

global.jaxa.jp

Element115Art@element115.bsky.social · last mo.

Project UPWARD mapping the moon. This was a joint NRO / NASA plan to send an Apollo capsule to photograph lunar landing sites using a modified recon satellite.

Two squares of lunar terrain with a spaceship over it.
Element115Art@element115.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Before the Lunar Orbiters were built, NASA and the NRO developed a top secret backup: Project UPWARD. This would have had a Apollo CSM carry a modified KH-8 recon satellite to photograph landing sites. Despite being cancelled, the project details remained classified until 2010.

Paul Voosen@voosen.me · 2mo ago

This "Promise" pitch/floater will be a good test for the space press who primarily focus on human spaceflight. Talk to planetary scientists. Where's that RTG gonna come from (and take away from)? How in the world do they think it would actually be flight operable?

Marshall@captain-exoplanet.bsky.social · 2mo ago

June 27, 2006: I graduate from Astronomy Camp at the University of Arizona after a visit to the then-incomplete Large Binocular Telescope June 27, 2026: I obtain the first light spectrum on the iLocater spectrograph, one of the second generation of LBT instruments 🔭🪐 #exoplanets

A slightly dark and grainy photograph of a teenager with long dark hair accepting a graduation certificate and poster from a white-haired man. Both are wearing white "Astronomy Camp 2006" t-shirts. They are standing at the front of a classroom which is filled with other people, many in the same t-shirts.A selfie of a smiling bearded white man wearing a "The Ohio State University Department of Astronomy" hoodie. He is standing in front of a giant telescope, much larger than a house, a huge frame of red and silver metal with a giant circular mirror visible at right.