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22 March 2009
The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest
(This is the final day of a week-long field trip in Arizona. Get caught up with days 1,2,3,4,5, 6) Friday was the last day of the field trip, and we spent it at the Petrified Forest national park. We were there to study the colorful clays and river deposits, but we began the day with an unexpected bonus: our guide, Bill Parker, is a paleontologist at the park, and he …
20 March 2009
Grand Falls and Sand Dunes
(This is day 6 of a week-long field trip in Arizona. Get caught up with days 1,2,3,4,5) Today we visited Grand Falls and the nearby dune field. Grand Falls is especially interesting because it combines many of the processes that are active in shaping planetary surfaces. The falls are the result of a huge lava flow pouring into the ancient canyon of the Little Colorado river, filling the canyon and …
2 March 2009
The MOC "Book": Volcanic Landforms
More about the MOC paper! This is part six of a series of posts looking at the huge 2001 paper summarizing the results from the Mars Orbital Camera (MOC): the first high-resolution camera in orbit around Mars. Check out the previous posts if you want to get caught up: 1,2,3,4,5 Today’s topic is volcanism, something I’ve written a lot about before on the blog. Mars is essentially a volcanic planet, …
28 February 2009
The MOC Book: Polar Processes
I’m falling behind on my blogging of the MOC “book”! We read a lot this week, so I will just stick to the highlights. In other words: mostly pictures, less text. This paper is really all about the pictures anyway! (if you’re just tuning in to the MOC series, check out posts 1,2,3 and 4) The Martian poles are extremely fascinating but extremely bizarre places. The polar caps are made …
6 February 2009
Weird Outcrops in Schiaparelli Crater
Today while we were discussing the section of the MOC paper that I posted about yesterday, we decided to look more closely at one of the figures. In the paper, the authors suggest that the light-colored rocks are on top of the dunes, implying that the dunes are fossilized, were buried and are now being uncovered. We found a HiRISE image of the area and found out that the truth …
5 February 2009
The MOC "book": Surface Patterns and Properties
Welcome to part 2 of our attempt at tackling The Beast. If you missed Part 1, check it out here. We are working our way, slowly but surely, through the monstrous 2001 Mars Orbital Camera paper by Malin and Edgett. This paper summarizes the results from MOC, which revolutionized the scientific community’s view of Mars. This week we’re going to be looking at the section discussing surface patterns and properties. …
4 February 2009
NASA on the Pancam Spinoff
[email protected] has a nice article about the Mars rover spinoff technology and the awesome inauguration picture that I wrote about before. Go check it out!
2 February 2009
New Google Mars
Google Earth’s latest edition was just released and guess what? It has a Mars setting! There was a way to overlay Mars data on the Earth globe in previous versions, but now that’s no longer necessary: just click a button and you’re on Mars. You can choose from a variety of global maps including topography, Viking images, Day and nighttime infrared, and visible color. It also has footprints for high …
30 January 2009
Rover Cake!
Today the rover team got an email from Michelle Nichols at the Adler Planetarium showing off the awesome cake that they had for their celebration of the rovers’ 5th anniversary on Mars. It’s absolutely amazing. I can’t believe they ate such a masterpiece! Here’s the description of the cake from the email: The body of the rover and the high gain antenna were all made of toffee buttercrunch cake with …
24 January 2009
Pancam spinoff enables 1,474 Megapixel Inauguration Photo
Remember how I posted about the cool commercial PanCam spinoff that can take giant panoramas? Well apparently photographer David Bergman used it to take a monstrous 1,474 megapixel image of the inauguration! The level of detail is amazing. Go take a look and remember that the space program helped make this image possible.
