"From Earth to the Solar System Lifts" Off

We are very excited to announce the launch of a new – and yet somewhat familiar -- project. Today, “From Earth to the Solar System” officially opens. As the name implies, FETTSS (our new favorite acronym) is a direct descendent of the “From Earth to the Universe” project.

This time, we’ve teamed up with the folks at the NASA Astrobiology Program to put together a new collection of images from the Solar System (of course.) We find these images to be completely fascinating and simply gorgeous. We hope you take some time to look through the collection at the website that went live today: http://fettss.arc.nasa.gov

As with FETTU, we expect that most of the FETTSS exhibits will be initiated and led by people other than us. We invite those who are interested in hosting an exhibit to please look through the website for more information. Once again, this material is free to use and comes fully prepared for display. We only ask that these images are exhibited in ways to get non-experts exposed to them. We’ll post more about this in the future, but if you are interested, be creative. Almost any venue can become a place to learn about science if the right thought and energy are put into it.

This time around, we also have new partners when it comes to distributing our version of an exhibit. Coming later this spring, we will have a traveling FETTSS exhibit that will be on display near sites of the “Voyage National Program.” This excellent project from the National Center for Earth Space Science has scale models of the Solar System in cities around the US. Look for a FETTSS exhibit at those locations very soon - with the first venue in Corpus Christi, Texas launching May 2011.

For now, we invite you to enjoy this first step on what we hope is a long-lived and exciting journey through our Solar System.

-Megan Watzke & Kim Arcand, CXC

Find FETTSS on Facebook and Twitter