16 December 2008
AGU Day 1: Titan
I spent most of the morning in sessions on Titan, hearing the latest on everyone’s favorite methane shrouded moon. There were several talks looking at the first preliminary topography results and trying to draw some conclusions from them. According to Howard Zebker, Titan is more oblate than you would expect if it was just in its equilibrium shape, meaning its poles are lower in elevation than its equator. Oddly, the …
15 December 2008
Blogging from the Bottom of the World
Did you know that most of the meteorites ever found come from Antarctica? It’s the perfect place to look for them because it’s dry and cold, so they are well preserved. Plus, when you’re out on a kilometers-thick ice sheet, all the rocks are meteorites! Just drive around and pick up anything that isn’t ice! Anyway, I bring this up because there is now a blog chronicling the adventures of …
Carnival of Space #83 – The Antipodean Edition
While I work on getting my AGU notes into some semblance of coherency, you should go check out the Carnival of Space over at Astroblog.
AGU Impressions
Attending a conference this large (15,000 abstracts) is an interesting experience. Boarding the plane last night, I saw a few dozen poster tubes, a clear sign of a scientist on the way to a meeting. The person in the seat in front of me was working on a table of atmospheric isotope ratios in a tattered notebook, and next to me was a friend from Cornell (now at Brown) who …
14 December 2008
Facebook Blogs
Hello readers! I just logged in to Facebook and discovered that they have a new “blogs” feature that allows people to rank blogs and join blog networks so you can see who else likes to read what you do. If you have a facebook account (and anyone can get one if you don’t) then I’d love to “meet” you! Also, you can vouch for me as actually being the author …
Blogging from the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
Tomorrow I’m heading to San Francisco along with 15,000 other scientists to participate in the 2008 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Yes, you read that right: fifteen thousand scientists in one place. This will be my first AGU and my first time in San Francisco so I’m excited. There’s tons of planetary science stuff scheduled, and I will be taking notes and blogging as much as possible …
11 December 2008
Mars in 3D
Apparently the folks on the HiRISE team decided that spectacular images weren’t enough. They have now released hundreds of 3D HiRISE images on their website, including the one above of layered rocks and sand dunes in Arabia Terra. (you may recognize this scene from my Mars Art post a few weeks ago) Grab your 3D glasses and enjoy!
8 December 2008
Mars Art: Rhythmic Layers
This week’s Mars Art image also happens to be the subject of an interesting new finding. A new paper in Science details the discovery of a set of layered deposits in Arabia Terra that appear to match the Martian Climate cycle. Mars’ tilt wobbles around and causes the climate to change with it. It follows the general pattern of ten smaller wobbles in between larger wobbles. The layers shown in …
7 December 2008
The Year-in-Review Meme
The rule: post the first sentence of the first post for each month. (I cheated a little…) February: The mantra of Mars exploration is “follow the water,” and my research is no exception. March: Check. This. Out. The HiRISE camera caught avalanches in action near the north pole of Mars. April: Big news! Google has teamed up with Virgin to form Project Virgle: the first human colony on Mars. May: …
4 December 2008
A single Mars program for the Earth?
One interesting tidbit that came out of the NASA presser on the MSL delay are comments made by NASA Assoc. Admin. for the Science Mission Directorate, Ed Weiler. Apparently, NASA and ESA have gotten clearance to start laying the groundwork for a joint Mars program. As Ed Weiler said: So David [Southwood – ESA Director of Science] and I sort of talked about the possibility of maybe we oughta think …
