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1 November 2012
Hurricane Sandy in Perspective, part 2
I was going to photoshop my own image comparing hurricane Sandy to the great red spot, but this will do nicely:
30 October 2012
Hurricane Sandy’s Rainfall in Perspective
With all the breathless reporting about how hurricane Sandy (a.k.a. Frankenstorm) is such a massive weather event, I was curious what the quantity of rainfall from Sandy looks like in comparison to, say, the amount of water in the martian atmosphere.
20 October 2012
Earth-sized planet discovered around Alpha Centauri!
Science fiction fans have been awaiting this news for decades: new results from the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) reveal that there is an Earth-sized planet orbiting the nearest star system to Earth.
15 August 2012
What time is it on Mars? Science Time.
We’re wrapping up the flight software update on Curiosity and getting ready to continue the commissioning phase, testing out each instrument in turn and gathering new science data. As you have seen, the cameras were already busy before the software update. That’s because taking a picture is relatively simple: the only movement involved is the rover mast and the focus. ChemCam is more complicated than taking a photo, but it …
11 August 2012
First Full-Resolution Mastcam Panorama
Feast your eyes on this: As you can see, there are still a few frames missing, but still. Wow. I love the way the crater rim fades in the distance, and the tantalizing glimpses at the layers of Mt. Sharp. The foreground is plenty interesting too, with a variety of rock shapes and colors, and of course the rocks exposed by the blast of the skycrane’s rockets. I feel like …
Sols 4 to 5: New Flight Software, MSL memes
After my uplink shift yesterday, I managed to catch a few hours of sleep before coming in at 3am. Today was my day off, you see. You may be wondering why one would come in to work at 3am on one’s day off. Answer: because that’s when the science happens! Actually, I mis-read the schedule. The science theme group meetings were more like 1am, but I got in in time …
10 August 2012
Sol 3 to 4: Colorful Gale
Today was a long day for ChemCam uplink. We are planning to collect the first passive spectra of the calibration target on Sol 4, and that means it is also the first time that the ChemCam optics will be focused, placing the instrument at risk for damage from the sun if it is pointed incorrectly.
8 August 2012
Introducing ChemRex!
I neglected to mention one important development from yesterday. On landing night, after I had finished freaking out about our successful safe landing, I noticed that fellow ChemCam post-doc Nina Lanza was wearing a very special ChemCam shirt with this on the front: As a big fan of lasers and dinosaurs (my favorite toys as a kid were DinoRiders), I had to ask about it. Apparently Nina had made an …
Sol 2 to 3: First Navcams, and some new craters
There was a lot of excitement today because the remote sensing mast successfully deployed and overnight we received the first full-resolution images from the navigation cameras.
Sol 1 to 2: MAHLI landscape, HiRISE Crime Scene
So, remember the awesome new data that I was geeking out about at the end of my previous post, but which I couldn’t share? Well, it has now been discussed at a press conference, so I’m free to share it. First up, here’s the image that made the ChemCam team shout out loud because of its sheer awesomeness…
