Johns Hopkins University (JHU) continues to pad its space community résumé with their interactive map, “The map of the observable Universe”, that takes viewers on a 13.7-billion-year-old tour of the cosmos from the present to the moments after the Big Bang. While JHU is responsible for creating the site, additional contributions were made by NASA, the European Space Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation.
Mosaic of the four highest-resolution images of Ariel taken by the Voyager 2 space probe during its 1986 flyby of Uranus.
Credit: NASA/JPL
The highest-resolution Voyager 2 color image of Ariel, showing canyons with floors covered
by smooth plains (lower right) and the bright Laica crater (lower left).
Credit: NASA/JPL
False-color map of Ariel, showing the prominent Yangoor crater (left of center) and patches of ridged terrain (far left). Credit: USGS
Image of Ariel, taken on Jan. 24, 1986, from a distance of 130,000 km (80,000 mi) showing the complexity of Ariel’s surface. Credit: NASA/JPL
Ariel’s transit of Uranus, which was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on July 26th, 2008.
Credit: NASA, ESA, L. Sromovsky (University of Wisconsin, Madison), H. Hammel (Space Science Institute), and K. Rages (SETI)
Voyager 2 captured this image of Uranus' moon Ariel in 1986 from 130,000 km away. New research based largely on this image hints at the nature of the moon's interior. Image Credit: By NASA/JPL - Public Domain, from wikimewdia
This Voyager 2 image of Ariel shows the names of some of the moon’s surface features. Image Credit: By Ariel_(moon).jpg: NASA/Jet Propulsion Labderivative work: Ruslik (talk) – Ariel_(moon).jpg, Public Domain, from wikimedia
This image (Figure 1) from the research puts Ariel’s complex surface on full display. The locations of the three known COLOR="RED">medial grooves are shown in red. Image Credit: Beddingfield et al. 2025.
This figure from the study shows possible configurations of Ariel’s Cratered Plains before (left) and after (right) spreading occurred. Note how neatly the chasma walls line up. “Our reconstruction focuses on removing the young chasma floors, examining the offset of the Kra Chasma segments, and aligning the similarly shaped chasma walls,” the authors write. Image Credit: Beddingfield et al. 2025.
A graphic explaining some of the features of NASA’s proposed Uranus Orbiter and Probe mission. Image Credit: NASA.