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....

[mike]

Maybe we should land a rover that has nothing but ball-topped poles of varying heights and see what ends up plastered to them as the sols pass. Call it "Maybe We'll Get Lucky".

It looks to me like that splat was created from a single collision, and that whatever hit it wasn't dense enough to damage the pole in any noticeable way.. Salty snowball?

[ljk4-1]

Do students and others still use the sundials to tell the local time of day on Mars with? I haven't heard much about that since they first landed.

[RNeuhaus]

Do students and others still use the sundials to tell the local time of day on Mars with?  I haven't heard much about that since they first landed.

Visit the following URL to learn more about Sundial : Sundial details

1) It is used to calibrate and adjust colors of PANCAM (4 different colors on the corners)
2) It is used to see the martian's sky color (two halph circle mirror plates on the border)
3) To track the time on Mars watch by its star corona on the bottom of the pole. (only used by students).


The sundials, positioned on each rover's rear solar panel, will help the Athena team adjust the rovers' panoramic cameras. Scientists will use the colored blocks in the corners of each sundial to calibrate the color in images of the landscape so that Mars can be seen in its true colors. And pictures of the shadows cast by a sundial's center post, or gnomon, will allow adjustments for brightness.

"On Mars, you don't know what color anything is," said Nye. "The Martian sky is so pink that it makes everything pink, and so you want to know if the object you're looking at is really pink or if it's pink light bouncing off the sky."

The grayscale calibration rings surrounding the gnomon represent the orbits of Mars and Earth, with two dots representing the planets. A keen observer might note that the dots are in the positions that Mars and Earth would have been in at the time of the Surveyor landing.

Each sundial is inscribed with the words "Two Worlds, One Sun" and bears the name "Mars" in 17 languages, including Bengali, Inuktituk, Lingala and Malay-Indonesian, as well as ancient Sumerian and Mayan. Four gold panels along the sides of the sundials are inscribed with stick-figure drawings of people, as well as a message to future Mars explorers:

"People launched this spacecraft from Earth in our year 2003. It arrived on Mars in 2004. We built its instruments to study the Martian environment and to look for signs of life. We used this post and these patterns to adjust our cameras and as a sundial to reckon the passage of time. The drawings and words represent the people of Earth. We sent this craft in peace to learn about Mars' past and about our future. To those who visit here, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery."

Rodolfo

[ljk4-1]

It looks like the dust storm is starting to fade. This image is posted here with permission.

I wonder why the 1971 storm was global and not any since?