Dust Storm? |
Dust Storm? |
Dec 29 2004, 08:23 PM
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Member Group: Admin Posts: 468 Joined: 11-February 04 From: USA Member No.: 21 |
QUOTE Pando : Latest: There are indications that there is a possible dust storm developing. The power levels have dropped quite dramatically at around Sol 330 for Opportunity and is somewhat worrisome. At Gusev things are trending similarly although it's a Sol or so later. This is getting interesting as it may even mean a global dust storm This seems to be deserving of its own topic, going off of Pando's post in the heatshield thread. Unfortunetly, the TES mainpage doesn't have daily dust maps anymore, and the latest bolometer images are from Dec 21: QUOTE The TES spectrometer is currently being used intermittently. At this time we're no longer producing daily images or movies of 15 micron atmospheric temperature or dust opacity. The TES bolometer is still being used full-time, and we will continue to update the daytime and nighttime temperature movies. I was looking at the rear haz from Sol 331, wondering what sort of clouds might be responsible, but a dust storm might make more sense. This post has been edited by slinted: Dec 30 2004, 09:15 AM |
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Jan 28 2005, 01:28 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 290 Joined: 26-March 04 From: Edam, The Netherlands Member No.: 65 |
QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 26 2005, 07:49 PM) You kind of have to trust Pancam I guess. You calibrate it when you land - and then you can use housekeeping data and darkfields to calculate how it's performing thereafter D I would say the same (there's obviously a big difference in dust load now, compared to a year ago), because there not much reason to believe that calibration of the camera would change the images that much, BUT: there's some aspects that makes me suspicious about fully relying on the appearance of (especially) Spirit's callibration target at sol 357, compared to sol 9: - the angle (and direction) of illumination with respect to the target and the camera is completely different in the two frames. Compare the appearance of shiny objects in sunlight at photographs between morning, noon and evening, and between summer and winter and we all know what i am talking about - optical depth (tau) and thus the relative part of scattered sunlight is of great influence considering the contrast of an image and it's "crispness" (compare pictures taken in direct sunlight to clouded circumstances: often it just appears more "dull"). - the distribution of brownish coloration of the black pole in the middle is homogenous. The ball atop is evenly covered on the horizontal AND vertical surface of it. Even the shaft under the ball is just as brown as the rest, while we know, that horizontal surfaces should build up dust much more than vertical ones. Seems to me there's more to it than just dust. What, i don't know, but there's something else influencing the look i would say. But, if Spirit is really as dusty as it looks, it makes me want to cry.... Marcel. |
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