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The Storm, Dust storm of 2007
climber
post Jul 11 2007, 09:43 PM
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QUOTE (djellison @ Jul 11 2007, 11:31 PM) *
Infact -thinking about it - I remember finding comedy in the fact that a Sirocco was dumping sand on my mums VW Sirocco. smile.gif
Doug

dd.gif Did any DD cleaned it up? biggrin.gif


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J.J.
post Jul 11 2007, 09:44 PM
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A similar phenomenon we have here is "muddy rain"; it isn't really muddy, of course, but it is rich enough in dust that was lofted into the atmosphere in arid West Texas and deposited here to leave a significant film on one's car.


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Astro0
post Jul 12 2007, 03:20 AM
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'helvick' said that figure is "bugging me".

Hi Helvick,
That number came straight from someone on the MER team.
I'm sure that there's room for error though.
Astro0
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fredk
post Jul 12 2007, 03:44 PM
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The latest navcam shows several changes in the tracks - the wind's been a-howlin' at Meridiani. And the shadows are much stronger now! (These views are less than half an hour apart local time.)

Sol 1224.
Sol 1231.
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helvick
post Jul 12 2007, 04:38 PM
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Thanks for the confirmation Astr0. I'm going to have to hope that this means that Tau was varying fairly dramatically that day. Otherwise I might have to accept I've been wrong. Oh The Shame! smile.gif
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OWW
post Jul 12 2007, 05:04 PM
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According to this report on space.com the dust storm is still spreading.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070711_mars_dust.html
and
http://themis.asu.edu/dustmaps/

The enormous dust storm raging across Mars' southern half has begun to creep into the northern hemisphere as well, new satellite images reveal.

"This storm isn't as big or severe as the one in 2001," Bandfield said. "THEMIS and other orbiters can still see the surface, despite the continuing dust activity."

It's uncertain how long the current storm will last, but it probably won't disappear as quickly as it began. "Mars will remain dusty for at least a couple more months," Bandfield predicts.


Sounds like the rovers will remain power-starved for a Long time. mad.gif
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Ant103
post Jul 12 2007, 05:58 PM
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Good eyes fredk. I'm going to make an animation to show this more evident wink.gif

The Themis link is very good : hop! direct favourite biggrin.gif

Edit : gif is finish.

Attached Image


The is little material disturbing, particulary just behind the low-gain antenna.


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Shaka
post Jul 12 2007, 06:51 PM
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QUOTE (OWW @ Jul 12 2007, 07:04 AM) *
According to this report on space.com the dust storm is still spreading.

Sounds like the rovers will remain power-starved for a Long time. mad.gif

Especially long if they read the scale bars in reverse.
What's wrong with this picture? space.com figure


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fredk
post Jul 12 2007, 07:34 PM
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It occurs to me after comments in the Spirit thread that even though the local times are very similar in the two navcams I posted above, the tau has dropped from around 4 to around 3 so the lighting is less diffuse now. That should account for some of the changes visible in the tracks, but not all.
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fredk
post Jul 12 2007, 09:45 PM
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From Lemmon's dust devil page, Oppy is stable at tau = 2.9 as of sol 1231, but Spirit has climbed in the past few sols to tau = 2.8 on sol 1252, which is the highest Spirit has ever been.

I get the sense this could linger for some time. The fat lady has not yet sung.
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MarsIsImportant
post Jul 12 2007, 09:56 PM
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I think you are correct Fred. This storm is not over yet. It could last a few more weeks. These peaks keep rolling into new peaks for other areas of Mars. We don't how bad this will get. It appears to becoming a global storm. Yet as far as we know, it could start to settle down tomorrow.

I'm glad that the tau at Meridiani appears to be stable; but who knows what will happen next?
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Guest_Oersted_*
post Jul 12 2007, 10:08 PM
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Guests






QUOTE (Ant103 @ Jul 12 2007, 07:58 PM) *
The is little material disturbing, particulary just behind the low-gain antenna.


On that gif the change in light diffusion in the shadow on the antenna is really obvious.
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edstrick
post Jul 13 2007, 06:57 AM
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What Viking and Mariner 9 saw was that storm activity keeps popping up and regenerating as long as there are relatively clearer parts of the atmosphere.

Once circulation and recirculation of storm-dust has pretty much uniformly filled the atmosphere with some relatively uniform few tau of dust, temperature differences drop below levels needed to churn up more dust. The storm then transitions to a decay phase, with an atmospheric dust half life of something like a couple weeks. Maybe that's equivalent to one tau's drop per two weeks..

Viking had two dust storms in one year -- most unusual -- the second one started just after the decay of the first storm got dust levels down to maybe about tau=1.. the levels present before the first storm really started.

As I recall, the first storm was pre-perihelion.. late spring.. the second was in summer.
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djellison
post Jul 13 2007, 07:31 AM
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talking of popping up again...

I've added a few bits - can you tell I was bored on the train yesterday smile.gif
Attached thumbnail(s)
Attached Image
 
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Reckless
post Jul 13 2007, 09:41 AM
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Hi Doug
These graphs have been very helpful to get an idea of whats going on.
Thanks for finding Marks data so quickly and putting it on the site, nice new touches too but perhaps there should be more orange (dust) on the top half of the graph to match the Tau going up.

Roy
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