As an astronomy enthusiast, I try to keep up on all the various goings-on in astronomy news. Astronomy, being a primarily visual science, often lends itself quite well to computer visualization. Recently, NASA landed on Mars again, this time near one of the Martian poles in an attempt to study the ice and landscape of this frigid region. Is there water ice there, or just dry ice made of frozen carbon dioxide? How much of each? That's what the Phoenix Mars Lander was sent to try to unravel.

Solar Power Grid Unfurled—image courtesy of NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona

As an editor for the Wolfram Demonstrations Project, I often get quite interested in new astronomy-related Demonstrations. One particular set, written by Sándor Kabai, focuses on the mechanics of not only the Phoenix Mars Lander, but probes from the past as well.

Landers, as opposed to other spacecraft, must overcome unique design challenges. Unlike orbiters, which typically have only sensors and cameras, landers usually have mechanical components to directly manipulate the surrounding environment like an astronaut could. These components come in many forms, such as wheels, scoops, drilling instruments and so on, which make landers much more interesting to visualize interactively. Although these are not strictly astronomy, more engineering, few would argue that they are space-related and therefore pretty cool!

Every so often, more often than you might think, a lunar eclipse happens somewhere in the world. Tonight, there will be a total lunar eclipse visible from the United States and numerous other regions. This can only happen when there is a full moon, but not every full moon results in a lunar eclipse. If the moon is directly along a line drawn from the Sun to the Earth, then the Earth’s shadow falls across the face of the moon, typically giving it a reddish hue. If you aren’t afraid of a little bit of cold weather and weather permits, you might try to see the eclipse yourself. You can study eclipse phenomena, both solar and lunar, in real-time using this Demonstration.