Dust Storm Options

[sranderson]

Spaceweather (www.spaceweather.com) is reporting a dust storm on Mars visible in amateur telescopes. Hope we don't get too much dust-fall on the solar panels....

[akuo]

I think this dust storm is already on top of Oppy. It looks like to me that there is one "finger" of dust extending over Oppy's position. See the comparison of these images from the original observer:

http://www.arksky.org/asoimg/MarAF4B178.jpg

This could be a very serious situation.

[Rakhir]

"Opportunity has seen some signs of the dust storm, which is apparently nearby.

Opportunity showed elevated dust levels, which were measured at an optical depth of about 1.4. The largest dust storm experienced by the rover occurred in June and rated an optical depth of about 2.

For comparison, a smoggy day in Los Angeles would rate an optical depth of about 1.0, and moderate days on Mars are about 0.5

"We started seeing more and more dusting on the solar panels," Mark Lemmon added. "And we have indirect evidence that these storms are windy. We've seen material blown out of the rover tracks over the last two weeks."

Meanwhile, Spirit has found some signs of additional atmospheric dust at Gusev Crater. She detected an optical depth of about 0.6"

http://space.com/scienceastronomy/051028_mars_storm.html

Rakhir