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A piece of Mars: This scene (600x450 m or 1969x1476 ft) is covered in small craters, formed by the splash of a larger crater nearby. They cover everything, even the bright ripples visible on the right. So the ripples were there before the impact that formed all these little craters. And yet... there are itsy little gray ripples on the upper right, merging with the crater rims - these are new ripples, younger than the craters. On Mars, it's the wind that wins in the end. (HiRISE ESP_039057_1485, NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona) read more ❯

Happy new year, Internet! I'm starting off the year at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. It's an annual conference where all the professional astronomers in the United States get together and talk about space! There's been some really cool presentations, including the discovery of Earth-sized planets in possibly habitable orbits around other stars by Kepler. Sounds pretty cool right? A subset of the GPI team was here for the AAS. We gave an update on the GPI Exoplanet Survey, presented posters on debris disks and exoplanets imaged by GPI, and even had a press conference on recent GPI results! In... read more ❯

I just... felt like putting up a pretty picture from MAHLI, the microscopic imager on Curiosity. This is image 0817MH0003250050301497E01_DXXX, taken Nov. 23, 2014 (sol 817). The camera mainly takes closeup images of rocks, but it's also good for a quick landscape shot. You can see where the camera was pointing here. read more ❯

To follow up to Jason's post, here's a photo of our summit team today - much reduced in numbers here in person from a year ago, but this is just the tip of the GPI team iceberg, and we were joined online and via teleconference by at least a dozen other members of the team from California to Canada to Maryland to Australia.  Not to mention all the tremendous contributions from so many team members to the hardware, software, target selection, and data analysis needed to bring this complex creature into reality. And, without further ado, now that GPI is built,... read more ❯

One year ago, GPI saw its first starlight on the night of November 11-12, 2013. In the year since that, the GPI team has been very busy. We've detected our first exoplanet, had a series of commissioning runs, took the SPIE conference at Montreal by storm, and found a new friend. Tonight, the night of November 11-12, 2014, we are in the midst of starting what GPI was designed to do: discovering new exoplanets! To celebrate this exciting year for GPI, we tried to recreate this moment from first starlight: Figure 1. The GPI commissioning team at the... read more ❯

The GPIES Exoplanet Survey has begun!  But that's a different post.  For now, here are some photos of these great beautiful machines.  As we came up to the domes after dinner tonight, we had a visitor overhead, circling around and, well, soaring over the SOAR telescope right next door.  Our local expert in Andean wildlife, Gemini instrument scientist Pascale Hibon, says this is a juvenile female condor, younger than three years because she's not yet displaying any white adult feathers. We have decided she is named Henrietta. The sun has just set, and we're slewing towards the first target of the... read more ❯

A piece of Mars: Wind ha blown the dark, rippled sand between jagged hills, from top to bottom in this frame (663 m or 2175 ft across). Regardless of the terrain, sand finds a way to get through -- just like at the beach, it manages to get everywhere. (HiRISE ESP_037494_1685, NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona) read more ❯

A piece of Mars: This looks like a pair of eyes looking at us. It's really some small brown hills, two of which (the "eyes") are surrounded by dark gray sand that has blown into scours as the wind interacts with the topography of the hills. It's a great way to tell what direction the strongest winds blow here: from the bottom to the top of the frame (the frame is 509x382 m or 1670x1253 ft). (HiRISE ESP_037995_1755, NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona) read more ❯

A piece of Mars: The swirly candy stripes in these big dark dunes are layers inside that have been made visible by wind erosion (the scene is 1.5x0.9 km, or 0.93x0.56 mi). It's rare to see the inside structure of dunes like this, but these are being eroded by wind blowing from the upper right. For similar examples on Earth, check out The Wave. (HiRISE ESP_037200_1765, NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona) read more ❯

These two papers by J.T. Wright's group were posted today on astro-ph The Ĝ Infrared Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. I. Background and Justification J. T. Wright, B. Mullan, S. Sigurðsson, M. S. Povich http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.1133 The Ĝ Infrared Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. II. Framework, Strategy, and First Result J. T. Wright, R. Griffith, S. Sigurðsson, M. S. Povich, B. Mullan http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.1134 Based on the analysis of WISE and Spitzer data, the authors concluded that "Kardashev Type III civilizations (a civilization that extracts fusion energy, information, and raw-materials from multiple solar systems) are very rare in the local universe”. I... read more ❯