MEX VMC - Back on, and online! Options

[djellison]

I heard about this 24 hours ago, and couldn't believe it - this is EXACTLY what has been missing from ESA. MASSIVE kudos to the ESOC MEX flight ops team for doing it

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/VMC/index.html

The last time I wrote a post and hit 'submit' at UMSF with a smile this big on my face, was when Oppy successfully got out of Purgatory.

[Juramike]

The thing that's been puzzling me is the appearance of the middle "rolling" cloud in the the sequence above. From the orientation of the image (S is roughly at top), it appears that the cloud stuff is moving/growing from S to N.

I would have thought that if there is a global redistribution caused by the CO2 freezeout at the cold high South Pole during the S hemisphere winter, then the overall circulation pattern (especially near the S pole) should go from N to S. This is in direct contrast to the image sequence.

This could be a parallax effect due to changing viewing angle, making the clouds way the heck up there. Or the "rolling" impression could be due to the cloud actually growing N towards the daylight due to the sun starting to warm and mix the upper layers of the atmosphere. (Kinda like the morning clouds you see here on Earth, just on a bigger scale).

I'm going to see if I can add the shorter exposure images (which I guess must be the 14 ms images) into the sequence to make a better resolution movie.

-Mike