OK, I'm feeling quite guilty about this, so I need to pull its thorns.

There is a hurricane building in the Gulf of Mexico, just swept a path of devastation across the western tip of Cuba. It has the potential to be a more powerful and damaging storm than Katrina of three years ago, and may also strike New Orleans.

It's name is Gustav.

And whenever I hear or see that name, a little correction voice in my head says "Don't you mean Gusev?"

Like I say -- feeling guilty about that, but there it is...

-the other Doug

Ah, don't feel bad, oDoug. You'll know you're a UMSFer if a major hurricane heads for the east coast of Florida later this year & all you'll care about is whether they can destack & shelter LRO in time. (You'd know that you were hard-core if you also lived in Cocoa Beach... )

Although we're not facing Gustav at the moment, it's blowing a gale here with icy sleet in Canberra at the moment.
I'm at my desk at the DSN, the wind is blowing at 55km/h and the temperature has dropped to 2.6°C.

You know that you're a UMSF'er when you're working on a Sunday...been talking with the public all day about Mars...been watching 2 big antenna dishes tracking Mars Odyssey and MRO...plus relay with Phoenix...and all you want to do is race home and log in to see all the latest images and news.

Astro0

Well the thing that created Gusev wasn't a light breeze either ... or a sand corn ...
And Astro0, glad you can still use Earthly units ... wonder if we'd all understood it if you'd said that the wind is blowing at 15.3 m/s
I myself been working (non-UMSF) until 4am on Sat, and will do so again on Sun, so I have a clear head to do the Dawn realtime simulation on Sunday in the day ...

You know you're an UMSFer... when you hear about a major hurricane, you search in vain for high resolution satellite imagery of it so you can go mosaicking...

You know you're a UMSF'er when you know where to go for the high res imagery people are looking for.

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/ - specifically http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?subset=USA7 - cunningly they pre-mosaic it into regional subsets. But if you just go to 'realtime' then you can find the raw swaths.

http://www.goes.noaa.gov/GSSLOOPS/ecir.html is also a good wider-angle tracking tool


I am scared half to death for New Orleans this time around. There are swathes of the place still no recovered and this sounds like it could be even worse.

I have to admit I have an "UMSF Moment" countless times a day. A simple crack in a paving stone will remind me of a dried up valley or gully seen on an MGS or MRO image, or a gravel-strewn path will remind me of those first Phoenix images... a casual glance up at wispy clouds in the sky on the way to or from work zips me back to animations of clouds over Endurance Crater...

And a look at an 'official' pic on a NASA website will more than often make me think - unfairly, I know - "Humph, James or (insert name) at UMSF did better than that..."

You know you're an UMSFer when you see a hopelessly grainy Luna 3 image and think, "I wonder what Tedstryk could do with this?"

Stu... I know I am an UMSFer because I've had those moments all my life and now have someplace to express it.... this forum.

Craig

Hey Stu, you should stay at our house then. It's virtually like Mars ... cracks in all walls (the landlord doesnt want to fix it) which get worse every winter, dust-storm views (windows are dirty because of the construction next door), I guess the CO2 ice can be fixed. The only thing that's not Mars like is the TV reception - all grainy n stuff - no sharp pictures from MRO

...when you check for the latest posts on your Blackberry while waiting for a haircut.

Yesterday, I spent three very pleasant hours walking eight dogs (and got paid for it!), and read a science paper on dark matter and 22 pages of the Cassini ISS handbook on my palmtop during the outing. Does that qualify me as a UMSFer?

Well - reports are it's being turned down to a Cat 2..

Still looks damn scary
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets...08244.terra.1km

On hazy days it is pretty easy to imagine some of the local hills here to be crater walls. I also note shadows of jet aircraft contrails to be similar to some of the shadow phenomena of the Saturnian rings. A nearby bluff was very handy for picturing in the minds eye ring particles interacting with a fixed obstruction on the surface of the body they are orbiting.

We get a few dust devils this time of year, too, and I am expecting them to look decidedly Martian this time around . . .

I like visualising the rovers' travels by finding real-world scale equivalents.

Luckily, my short trips from Airdrie, Scotland, to the nearish-by Lochend Loch bear an uncanny resemblance to Opportunity's route so far. There, I can feed the ducks and think of Duck Bay, at a hole in the ground whose size is not a bad match for Victoria.

(With an additional dash of delicious irony, this places purgatory somewhere near Coatbridge town centre.)

Andy