Last week , I told you we would show you a new map of Mercury based on the January MESSENGER flyby. Here it is, kindly provided by one of NASA’s master mappers, Robert Gaskell of the Planetary Science Institute in Altadena, California. This image is an anaglyph — a flat image that simulates a three-dimensional view — of the fault scarp Beagle Rupes as it cuts across the crater Sveinsdóttir. The area shown here is about 160 miles (257 kilometers) square...

In Dan Pendick's blog, "Mercury's master mapper," he told you we were converting two high-resolution animations from Robert Gaskell, a participating scientist in the MESSENGER mission to Mercury, of the asteroids Eros and Itokawa. Well, we're done converting them to Flash, and you can now view them. We've housed the converted animations on Astronomy.com, so click on the asteroid names below to watch them: Asteroid Eros Asteroid...

The October issue of Astronomy is in the hands of subscribers and hits newsstands next Tuesday. For readers, it means interesting new articles and amazing photographs; for me, it means the time has come to update Astronomy.com to reflect our new issue. Updating the web site for each issue was a new responsibility given to me just two weeks ago. And while I consider myself pretty computer savvy, analyzing words on paper is definitely more of my strong...

It’s funny who you get to know on an eclipse trip . I’ve met corporate executives, small-business owners, professional photographers, and lots of others. On our recent trip to Siberia to view the August 1 total solar eclipse , we met Ed Piwowarski , a guy who paints movie sets. My wife and I are both big movie fans, so we asked him what movies he had worked on. He mentioned several box-office hits, some independent films, and others not so well known...

Many people — at least, many of the people science writers write for — read to satisfy a basic curiosity about the universe. How does the world work? What’s out there in the unfathomable great beyond of outer space? Astronomy readers, in particular, enjoy getting their minds bent around improbable ideas like black holes, multi-dimensional universes, and lakes on Titan filled with that stuff in your barbecue grill gas tank. But can writing about science...

My wife and I attended a friend’s wedding this past weekend. When I told the groom’s mother what I did, she let forth the following: “Oh, you work for Astronomy magazine?! My husband is totally hooked on the Galaxy Zoo Project !” Turns out “totally hooked” is an understatement. Her husband told me he has cranked out thousands of galaxy classifications in the last 6 weeks. Each night, he sits at his computer, turns on some music, and gets crankin’...

Here is the transcript for my podcast about how to see Jupiter, M57, and NGC 1 during the next few days. Targets for August 22–28 Naked eye: Jupiter Small telescope : M57, the Ring Nebula 8-inch or larger telescope: NGC 1 --Begin transcript-- Just starting out? Let’s get started with this week’s naked-eye object. And it’s an easy one — Jupiter . All you have to do is look toward the south after sunset. If your sky is clear, you’ll spot Jupiter blazing...

In centuries past, explorers would visit terra incognita — unknown lands — and bring new information back home to feed the master mappers of Europe. It hasn’t changed all that much — except the explorers are robot spacecraft and the master mappers of the solar system are scientists. Late Tuesday afternoon, I saw a NASA press release about one of NASA’s master mappers, Robert Gaskell. He’s a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson...

You know, it’s not often that I get excited about a partial lunar eclipse. Yes, the “near-perfect” alignment is cool, but it doesn’t get all that dark, and I just find myself wishing the event was a total eclipse. Well, here’s an image I’m really jazzed about. It came to me (as Photo Editor) from one of our long-time imagers, Anthony Ayiomamitis, who lives in Athens, Greece. When I look at his image, I can almost feel the Moon moving through Earth...

On August 22, we’ll unveil a new podcast . Senior editor Michael Bakich , a master at explaining how to observe, will select three objects or events you can see in the sky. Each week, Michael will highlight: One object you can see without any optical aid One object you can see with a small (4-inch) telescope One object you can see with at least an 8-inch telescope We recorded the first episode yesterday, and it sounds great. We’ll post a new episode...