Here's an old picture of Jupiter's famous red spot, taken by the Voyager spacecraft. According to scientists at U.C. Berkeley, the spot shrunk about one kilometer a day, between 1996 and 2006. We don't know exactly why it's shrinking - or why it changes colors - but it's a storm, and storms have a natural growth and disintegration rate, say scientists.

Meanwhile, it turns out the earliest photographed exoplanet was back in 1998 - a new technique stripped out starlight from a 1998 image to reveal a previously unknown planet orbiting the distant star HR8799. Here's a lovely artist's impression, with the actual image as an inset:

Finally, NASA is digitally restoring and cleaning up images from the lunar probes of 40 years ago, resulting in new images of the moon that include way more detail and depth:

Scientists theorize that the "G" ring formed from icy debris that scattered when meteorites crashed into the newly discovered moon. Said Cornell University astronomer Matthew Hedman:

Before Cassini, the G ring was the only dusty ring that was not clearly associated with a known moon, which made it odd. The discovery of this moonlet, together with other Cassini data, should help us make sense of this previously mysterious ring.

Meanwhile, NASA was seeking your votes on where to point the Hubble Space Telescope next, and nearly half of the 140,000 voters chose an interacting pair of spiral galaxies, Arp 274, which appear to be shaking hands. The full-color image of this galactic get-together will come out during the 100 Hours of Astronomy event, April 2-5.

Comporellon
From: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series
History: Comporellon, known first as Baleyworld and then as Benbally World, was one of the first planets settled by human Spacers.
Local Color: Comporellians operate under a strict social and religious ethic and are quite sexually repressed, although said repression can be countered through robotic mind control.
Key Attraction: Clues to the location of Earth.
Watch out for: Corrupt government officials who will try to swindle you out of your superior technology. Also, Comporellon is one of the colder planets in the Foundation Federation, so be sure to pack your thermal underwear.

Harmony and Association
From: Gordon Dickson’s Childe Cycle
History: Two of the 15 planets colonized by humans, Harmony and Association are a pair of impoverished planets inhabited by the Friendlies and ruled by the Council of Churches.
Local Color: The Friendlies are fierce adherents to their religion, able to endure any hardship in service to their faith. Some are quietly spiritual while others are full-blown fanatics.
Key Attraction: Farms. Both planets are largely agrarian, although they supplement their meager incomes by drafting their citizens to serve as mercenaries.
Watch out for: Sectarian violence between warring groups of Friendlies.

Kukulkan
From: L. Sprague de Camp’s Viagens Interplanetarias Series
History: As humans spread out into the stars, one of the planets they settle is Kulkulkan, a planet already inhabited by the reptilian “Kooks.”
Local Color: The Kooks are an intelligent, dispassionate, and honorable race who have managed to construct cities, forge edged weapons, and develop steam technology. They have a land treaty with the human Terrans, but still eye their new planetary roommates with cool suspicion, so be nice.
Key Attraction: Steampunk dinosaurs.
Watch out for: Evil land developers, evil loggers, and anyone else looking to repeat the cycle of American colonization.

Yellowstone
From: Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space Series
History: Humans colonized the planet Yellowstone and a series of surrounding orbital habitats known as the Glitter Band. At one point, it becomes the height of human civilization.
Local Color: Depending on which century you choose to visit, the upper crust of Yellowstone could be technologically sophisticate democratic anarchists leading a life of luxury, or deformed survivors clinging to the last vestiges of their culutre’s former glory.
Key Attraction: The sight of the greatest achievements in human history, or the ruins thereof.
Watch our for: The Melding Plague, which will attack any nanotech in your body and leave you dead or physically deformed.

Vulcan
From: Star Trek
History: Vulcan is the birthplace of both the Vulcan and Romulan peoples, the former going on to found the United Federation of Planets.
Local Color: The Vulcans are a coldly logical people with a coldly beautiful culture. They are restrained and polite, and if they seem condescending, don’t take it personally. They’re that way with everyone.
Key Attraction: The kal-if-fee, a rare but blood-pumping event where two fighters battle to the death over a woman's hand.
Watch out for: The lack of meat and booze. Vulcans stick to a mostly vegetarian diet and don’t derive much enjoyment from alcohol.

Babylon 5
From: Babylon 5
History: Following the Earth-Minbari War, the space station Babylon 5 was placed in orbit around the abandoned planet Epsilon III to serve as a political neutral venue of human-alien discourse.
Local Color: At Babylon 5, you’ll witness one of the most diverse groups of residents in the galaxy, from the imperialistic Centauri to the spiritual Minbari to the mysterious Vorlons.
Key Attraction: Red Sector, which houses the station’s gardens, swimming pool, casino, and sports bar.
Watch out for: Anything and everything. When the various governments aren’t threatening to go to war and a rogue alien or telepath isn’t about to rend the station apart, one of the thugs from Downbelow is bound to steal your traveler’s checks.

Located in the Australian outback, this 14-mile long crater was created about 140 million years ago. Today it's called Gosses Bluff and this hilly area pictured is the 2-mile-wide center of the impact.

Check out more planet-smashing goodness in the full photo essay.

Target Earth [via National Geographic] (Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!)

According to a release from Oregon State University, where some of the research took place:

While using fluorescence to illuminate organic material has been done for decades, light sources were too large and unwieldy to use for a robotic mission to another planet, said [researcher Michael] Storrie-Lombardi. However, new generations of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are very small, reliable and energy efficient, he added.

"Placed on a Mars rover, one of these LEDs positioned a few centimeters from a target can easily provide enough light to produce fluorescence in small polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons," Storrie-Lombardi said. "But even more encouraging is the very recent development of a small 375 nanometer laser diode that can illuminate anything a PanCam can see, including geological layers and crevices high up on an otherwise inaccessible rock outcrop."

Added [U.K. scientist Jan-Peter] Muller: "This laser is now undergoing rigorous tests in the laboratory under Mars-like conditions prior to showing that it is flight-ready, even at this late stage, to be seriously considered to be launched in only five years' time."

The instrument appears to be "an ideal initial survey tool," Storrie-Lombardi pointed out.

"It requires no sample preparation, does not destroy sample material and requires only electrical power to operate, conserving precious water and other consumable resources for sister instruments," he said.

I'm waiting for a USB version of the device to attach to my laptop or mobile. You never know where you might need to scan for lifeforms.

Laser fluorescence could find life on Mars [via Eurekalert]

Here you can see cacti dotting the edges of the salt flats. If you were going to try to introduce plants to Mars gradually, a succulent like cactus would be a good bet. Of course, that assumes that you've already introduced sufficient nitrogen to the environment, or have bioengineered cacti that could thrive in the Martian atmosphere — and in temperatures much colder than anything in Bolvia.

These are the mud pots of Sol de Mañana, which release steam and sulfur as well as hot mud. The strange blue cast to the mud comes from the scalding water reflecting the sky at dawn. This might be from the surface of ultra-volcanic moon Io, rather than anywhere on Mars.

If you want to see many more of the amazing photographs Steinmetz took, check out the National Geographic gallery. Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

Bolivia's Brink and Bolivia's New Order Gallery [via National Geographic]

Space.com reports on the ongoing water search:

[TEGA team leader William] Boynton says the team wasn't surprised that they found no indication of water ice because the sample sat out in the Martian sun for several days while it was stuck at the entrance to one of TEGA's ovens, which heat up the soil so that the instrument's mass spectrometer can analyze the composition of the vapors the soil gives off.

In the next few days, scientists will further heat the sample up, to a maximum of 1,800 F (1,000 C), to vaporize out minerals that might have chemically-bound water, carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide.

"We expect there's a high probability that we would find minerals with chemically-bound water, which would release their water at higher temperatures," Boynton said. Signs of water in the minerals would indicate that rocks on the surface once interacted with liquid water.

And here's what's going on with that mystery white substance:

Mission scientists are still debating whether this bright, white material is exposed subsurface water ice or salt minerals. "It could be ice; it could be salt. We have to sample it to be able to tell," said Phoenix robotic arm team leader and mission digging czar Peter Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis.

A small chunk of the material was knocked loose by the robotic arm scoop as it performed one of its backhoe-like maneuvers in the trench. Scientists will be monitoring this chunk and expect to see it change if it actually is ice.

"If it really is ice, we expect it to sublimate, or go into the vapor phase," Arvidson said.

Here's hoping it's the top of a secret underground laboratory put there by an alien race to study humanity from a distance.

Robot Finds Mars Dry So Far [via Space.com]

Miranda

Mongo

Vulcan

Naboo

Zanak

Ring World

Tollana

Krypton

Fyrine IV

Camazotz

Helix Nebula image by NASA. [BBS News]