Re: SF Valley -- My McMansion will be on the approaching side of Endeavour. In Mars gravity, maybe I could hit a golf ball all the way to Stu's Crater!
Ah yes, a shot from the Southern rim. What I meant was a a pan from the CENTER of the Valley. But you'd have to get on a tall building to see over all the other structures. Honestly though, Van Nuys is an unpleasant place to visit unless you are getting some body work done on your car or arranging a large printing job.
Re: Van Nuys Giga Pan
100 jokes are swirling through my tiny brain.
Ned Kelly! Funny... yes, it looks just like him!
Phil
Nice try Phil but that's Crocodile Dundee and you must have Photoshopped him in in your photo. I hate to disagree with a senior member but here's the empirical (Aus style) proof that it was Ned Kelly in my undoctored photo.
(Death of Sergeant Kennedy by Sydney Nolan)
That's no Crocodile Dundee! A virtual Mars Bar for the first person to correctly identify the shadow in my picture.
Phil
Phil my gut reaction was that your's was a nod to Freddie Krueger but his hat was a Fedora - that shadow looks more of like an Abe Lincoln style to me but the rim is a bit weird.
Oh no, there's a strong Aussie connection. In fact, I once told an Australian woman that this person (the shadow) was my main source of information about Australia. She was very deeply offended (as I had anticipated).
Phil
Whatever happened to "Keeping UMSF at an 'impressively high level"?
Oh yeah, I forgot about that...
Phil
Wild guess -- it's the hat of Sherlock Holmes?
***and yes, this thread is side-tracked -- for scientific investigations
What else can we do when there are no pictures from Mars?
Sherlock Holmes? What's antipodal about him?
Phil
Okay, gotta beg a hint: Is this related to a media and/or cultural figure in the UK or Canada? I'm totally at a loss here!
British... with Ozzie roots... and there's a clue in the filename...
Phil
Ha! Barry "Bazza" McKenzie?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McKenzie
As a proud Australian...I think that conversation should stop right here.
Barry McKenzie!?! Phil, be ashamed, be very ashamed. Surely Alvin Purple would better represent us
Enough!
Meanwhile back on Mars...
Yes -
Oh, I'm ashamed! (heh heh) A virtual Mars Bar to nprev! I grew up with good old Bazza in the pages of Private Eye, and I still have all the books of collected strips.
OK, back to Mars. Time to point Pancam at the - uh - plains.
Phil
Indeed. (However, I'm diggin' my vMars Bar...my first! )
Hey - we've been relegated to the junk drawer! Yeah, OK, we've finished now.
Phil
Feel free to continue the discussion here.
This is going to be a place to put off topic discussions that start to tangle with the main discussion. If it was really bad it would get deleted. This is where we will put stuff we don't want to throw away but we need to clean up because company is coming.
If anyone has a better name, "The Box Under the Bed", the Garage, whatever, we can reconsider what to call it.
brellis--bet you did not expect the honor of being Topic Starter for this esteemed thread
I'm sure it will be extremely useful as things tend towander from time to time.
How about "Parking Orbit"?
OK, so now this is in a 'dusty' hardly read corner of UMSF I feel free to tell the true story. Astro0 has a good point about Alvin.
Central Australian logic quickly gets to the root of this logical conundrum ........ "Bazzanya, paluru wati mulupa nyinatja wiya. Palura panya nyintja wiya, palumpa photo kilipi Martja ku mantankga putu mantjilpai. Tjurkurpa nyangatja tjukururu wiya". (Pitjantjajtara is one of our lovely Centralian languages).
Translated roughly as this.... "Bazza is not a real person. Since he's not a real person, then it's not possible to take a photo of him on the surface of Mars. It's not logical."
On the other hand, ALVIN IS REAL. (ikaringanyina!!)
Several unproductive posts moved from the "http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=681&view=findpost&p=166083" thread
Dear Tesh, do you have less strongly compressed big map? At x2, jpeg artifacts are quite visible in the image you attached, can you save it from your master file with higher quality setting?
It's already saved with almost no compression at all -- 9 in a scale of 1 (heavy compression) to 10 (no compression). If I use the next setting (10) the file size becomes almost 6MB and that's a big no, no.
The problem, as I see, is that you are trying to zoom into the map (e.g. x2) and it was not intended for that purpose. If you want to see more details as in this 1m/pix map I suggest to use Google Earth and the route map in its KML version.
Yes there are jpeg artifacts - but so what? The purpose of the image is to show Oppy's current position, that is more than clear enough.
The map is downscaled from the full HiRISE image so it is not really the best thing to look at in detail, artifacts or no artifacts. If you want to look closely at the terrain then do as Tesheiner posted previously and look at it in GE. Then you get the full 25cm resolution.
Remember that the map gets posted time and time again and in the end this takes a lot of space that has to be hosted/backed up, so making the file sizes bigger is not desirable.
Den, you're asking for something totally and utterly pointless. Moreover, it would just fill up UMSF's server quicker.
The quality of ET's maps is already more than good enough for the purpose for which they are intended.
Discussion over.
UNNECESSARY QUOTING REMOVED - Admin
I love these side-by-side comparisons. Have you thought of embedding text within the images stating in some way that they are doctored images? Lazy news reporters or bloggers might grab some for use in articles without reading carefully. This thought came to mind after reading about Emily Lakdawalla's episode with some minor image manipulations she put online that caused some misunderstandings. For the sake of good science, which is getting battered in some quarters, especially here in the U.S.! Just a thought and not a critique of your excellent work.
I agree that doctored photos, especially photogenic stuff like these recent crater comparisons, should have something embedded in the image that will clue the unwashed masses in that this is not simply some shot taken directly by a camera. Years ago a vice-president of a company I worked for had a montage photo of Jupiters' moons (with Jupiter in the background) mounted on his office wall and I was never able to convince him that it was a collection of different photos and that those moons would never, in reality, be in the positional relationship that photo presented them in.
Given that the description of what they are and how they are made is right here at the place where the images are to be found, I see no reason to suspect a message on the image would have any more impact.
Consider your boss.... if in the bottom corner it said 'Photo montage' - he would be none the wiser. If you were unable to convince him, right there, in conversation... no text qualifier on the image would manage it either.
Every single image here is doctored in some way at some stage by some means. If someone is so uninformed as to need to be reminded of that every time they see an image... there really is very little we can do for them. In the case of Emilys recent adventure - the people commenting were nothing but conspiratorial nut jobs. No message, qualifier, cautionary comment or bi-line would convince them otherwise. Emily came right out and said, clear as anything... I made it, this is how, this is why it looks like it does... and people STILL piped up about the obvious conspiracy it proved must exist.
In brief - why compromise an image with un-necessary text to accommodate idiots?
/\
What he said.
As I said - I consider it more than enough disclaimer. I will not be adding disclaimers to thing I make. Feel free to add them to things you make (something you have not done, to date)
You also said "Perhaps true, but "...not claiming 100000% scientific accuracy" is not much of a disclaimer."
Stu's post included far far more disclaimer than you have used for images you have posted.
Ahem.
Discussion over folks.
Good call.
Indeed; I felt my answer addressed his question. The inclination of the moon's orbit isn't a function of Mars' obliquity.
So the equatorial orbits are a temporary coincidence, and we don't have to worry about explaining them when we address the question of the satellite origins?
Phil
Indeed.
The group of extrasolar hot Jupiters in retrograde/inclined orbits relative to their star, unless there's a major difference between how it works between rigid and fluid primary bodies, points to a lack of ability to change the inclination of the secondary's orbit via the primary's obliquity.
@stevesliva
Interesting!
I was wrong.
Thanks for that. I've learned something new. I'll have to research this more.
As I said before, I know nothing about orbital dynamics. But I had thought that an oblate object's equatorial 'bulge' applied a torque on an orbiting moon that pulled it into an equatorial orbit. It doesn't work for our Moon, or Iapetus, because they are too distant. It might not work for those hot Jupiters because the stars are not oblate (or an oblate outer layer has too little mass to have an effect). Can anyone say more? How about Saturn's axial precession? Isn't the whole inner Saturnian system following the planet as it precesses? Seems to me the solar system would be a real mess if this wasn't happening.
Phil
With the solar system being roughly coplanar, we might expect that the impactor that formed the moon would have come from the same solar system plane and thus the debris (proto-Lunar disk) would be in roughly the solar system plane, and consequently the Moon as well.
I apparently misread the post I replied to earlier.
The Moon isn't in a perfectly equatorial orbit because of various gravitational effects on the Moon (the sun, others), causing its orbit to vary on fairly short timescales.
So, ngunn is right. At first, the Moon was too deep in Earth's gravitational well to be as severely affected by these various perturbations, but as it drifted out it became more subject to them.
ADMIN: Moved from http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=6913&st=0 thread. Pointless initial comment and perfectly valid replies ignored.
I certainly agree that these are beautiful images, but I swear I can't see nearly as many blueberries - in the rock matrix - that others are implying in this and other threads. What's wrong with my eyes?!
Is the emperor in his birthday suit or no?
Help!
Who's mentioned berries in this thread? I can find no reference.
You're right, Stu. I should have taken the time to carefully read the comments. In this thread no one is counting blueberries except me. And I'm getting very low counts. Am I the only one? You've stated in the other thread I just came from, that Ruiz is "bleeding berries". I see nothing of the sort. I'd like to poll the jury on this issue. Is this a reasonable request?
Honestly, you're taking my clearly flippant comment 1) far too literally and 2) far too seriously. Go back to the other thread, see the pic with emerging berries actually ringed to make them easier to see, read my absolutely amateur take on it, then let that bee fly out from under your stone bonnet
I anticipate that driving, as well as official site updates (and maybe even site access), will take a hiatus for lack of (fiscal) fuel. Let's hope for a very short pause.
REMINDER: no debates about the underlying cause. Just wanted to alert our non-US readers that barring unforeseen changes, all non-essential US Government functions stop tonight until funding issues are resolved.
This same scenario interrupted the Galileo entry probe science transmission... grrr
In any case, the law allows work involving the securing of life and property to continue. Missions that are actually "flying" are considered to fall in that category.
From Florida Today:
Q: What effect would a government shutdown have on NASA, the space
program and workers at KSC preparing for the April 29 launch of Endeavour?
A: NASA headquarters said the agency will "take the steps necessary to
maintain the safety of our astronauts in orbit and ongoing mission
operations for the International Space Station and our other ongoing
science and space missions."
ADMIN: Folks, let's not stray into further discussion on this topic.
Well, to be fair, Dan is right. There is no such thing as a baseline standard of measurement. Remember that the meter was originally defined with respect to a rather arbitrary physical reference: 1 x 10 exp -7 the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole. This was almost certainly at least a subconscious homage to Earth's "special place in the Universe", and therefore not based on anything remotely resembling a mythical absolute standard.
Not intended to be a defense--or an assault--with respect to ANY system of measurement. The real point here is that everyone in a complex endeavour had damn well better be working from the same set of same. I think that the unfortunate failure to follow this glaringly obvious (in retrospect) heuristic a few years back provided an enduring lesson that is unlikely to be forgotten--or repeated.
(FWIW, even though I'm an American I'm a HUGE fan of the SI protocol...I doubt that I would have survived my physics courses without it, to say nothing of any other discipline that demands intensive calculation. Base 10 makes all kinds of sense to us goofball humans, and that's arguably the most powerful reason to embrace the metric system.)
I'll echo Nicks comments and add that in my own work I've found that going to using the log values and log scale is a really good way to highlight relationships and avoid over-interpreting data.
So whatever measurement system is used, it's gotta be in multiples of 10.
Hi Tesheiner
Awesome job on the Maps. I know you put KM marks on your map but can you also put mile marks when possible. Us Americans are still old school
and use that still.
Thanks.
I'm pretty sure Tesh has more than enough to do with keeping the maps updated as often as he does, Bobby. You can do the km/miles conversion yourself very easily, you can even use the Calculator that comes with Windows.
Easy guideline for converting anything to anything else: "Measure it with a micrometer, mark it with chalk, cut it with an axe."
Micrometer: miles = 0.62137119 km
Chalk: 2/3 km, then 10% less
Axe: 2/3 km
Gotta admire your work ethic, Bobby
I am sure Bobby has enough constructive advice to be going on with for now. Thanks everyone for your input.
Let's get back to the subject of route maps now, ok?
If I'm right the 2 bold lines we're very close to, crosse at 10 km East and 16 Kms South from Eagle, while Spirit's point is close to 11km East and 17 Kms South.
It is 9km and 10km E, respectively.
hum hum
Google Mars give me 17,702 km in strait line to Eagle, it can't be 9 & 10 Eduardo.
"17,702 km"
Are you sure that wasn't to Deimos?
Phil
Again this measurement issues
The coma separates kms AND meters here in Europe.
So I should have written 17702 meters... but I like your reply
Ok thanks. I'll paid more attention next time
Now, I'm still interested in knowing where we are from Eagle.
Here's an overview of the region with a 1000 m grid superimposed. There is always a slight variation between images like these because of relief distortions etc. so this is close to Tesheiner's grid position but not exactly identical. But it allows one to count grid cells quite easily.
Phil
Thanks Phil, very handy.
This confirm 16S/10E
I'd said we are both wrong
Can we agree Spirit's point is very close to 17 kms South and 10 km East of Eagle?
17.702 (USA+UK) = 17,702 (continental Europe)
It's similar problem as miles vs. kilometers, or short scale (billion = 1 000 000 000 in USA and UK) vs. long scale (billion = 1 000 000 000 000 in most continental European countries).
I remember the preference being 'thousand million' instead of billion.
disappointed I mean... a false friend between French and English
Junk Drawer? I guess this one fits right in here:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-solar-system-discovered-four-feet-from-earth,1094/
The Oxford dictionary defines water as a colourless, transparent, odourless, liquid which forms the seas, lakes, rivers, and rain ..... By definition the other H2O phases, ice and vapour, are not water. Ice and water vapour have been identified, but to the best of my knowledge water has not been detected on mars other than maybe perhaps on the Phoenix strut which was not a native Martian event and really should not count. But the evidence of water in the past, of varying pH, is pretty convincing.
The elementary high school chemistry argument is something of a red herring. Early on Martian water may well he had a reasonably high pH. In the later, volcanic period then it is true that acidic water weathers basalt and basalt buffers acidic water. But in a system where acid is being constantly replenished by volcanic influences then regardless of the presence of basalt we can end up with acidic water near the surface and deeper alkaline water. The plethora of potential mixing relationships can result in products such as hematite concretions and Calcium sulphate deposition.
[MOD]: And this post is a contribution to a list from credible sources as defined by EGD how?
If anyone wants "a list from credible sources," just look at the above-mentioned Wikpedia article "Water on Mars" (most recently modified by someone today, 2/10, incidentally) and be done with it. And you can add to the Wikipedia article yourself, if you see that it's incomplete. Instant credibility?
The purpose of my "need for humility" post was simply to note that today's "credible sources" regarding evidence for water on Mars can easily become tomorrow's "known to be spurious" sources (with considerable overlap in timing possible, depending on who is doing the writing). The canals or alleged annual vegetation changes are the best-known examples, safely in the distant past, so that all the scientists involved are dead. The "young gullies" feature (see posts 1 and 5 above), discovered from orbital images in 2000, could well turn out to be another dud (and I was directly involved in that discussion, probably on the wrong - wet - side). In regard to gullies, for example, Richard Kerr's AGU "Snapshots from the Meeting" summary in the 12/21/12 issue of Science discusses "New evidence that changes in the appearance of martian gullies from year to year are the result of carbon dioxide frost (aka dry ice)".
So no list of evidence for past or present liquid water on Mars, no matter how elementary, would be complete without noting that the evidence, in many if not most cases, is equivocal and subject to changes in interpretation. That is, valleys, gullies, and conical debris aprons can be formed by various types of flows, rocks can be rounded by any type of friction or certain types of weathering, hydrous minerals and salts can form in hot steam as well as in lakes and seas, cross-bedding forms in many distinct types of flow environments, spherules are formed by a huge variety of geologic processes, the temperature stability of liquid water with regard to freezing or evaporating/boiling can be modified by a variety of solutes, and so on. That is real nitty-gritty science, not press releases or greatly simplified Wikipedia articles.
For Mars, the direct observations (e.g., young gullies and debris aprons) remain valid as interesting scientific discoveries, but the human interpretations (e.g., evidence of recent water flows) are invariably subject to our prior experience and expectations. Possible observer bias and the influence of expectations on scientific outcomes (e.g., involuntarily making what becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; we expect or hope to see evidence of X, and therefore we do) is a subject much studied by psychologists such as Robert Rosenthal, and regarding which there are many articles in Wikipedia and elsewhere. I hope you agree that this general topic (basically, urging caution in interpreting the evidence) is relevant, especially given its well-documented prior history in martian water studies.
- dburt
Thanks dburt. Doing good science is a difficult process--interpritations are tricky--ultimately science is self correcting, but it can take years. I even appreciated the humor in your understated post #16
2 fine cents there, centsworth II
This is ridiculously off-topic, but the Hasselblads were chest-mounted, so it's only to be expected that the visor reflection doesn't appear to show Jack taking this picture (the TV footage proves he was indeed the photographer).
Actually, on this occasion the Hasselblad wasn't on the chest-mount; Jack was holding it in his right hand, kneeling down to get Gene, the flag, and Earth in the frame.
ADMIN NOTE: Please note that a number of comments below contained information that was 'off topic' in the Philae thread. The reasons are stated http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=7896&view=findpost&p=216028here.
Has anyone heard anything yet from the CONSERT experimenters about their assurance that they would be able to pinpoint the landing site within just a few days after the landing? AFAIK, we haven't gotten that information out here in the non-ESA world yet.
Also -- and this is not a criticism, just a statement of how much the American and European cultures apparently differ -- I find it odd that most ESA comments about the landing still seem to take great pride that they landed Philae not once, but three times! When actually they bounced Philae off of the comet and there was a large element of luck in the fact that it eventually fetched up against a spot where it could perform most of its experiments. If JPL had such a result in a similar landing attempt, the element of luck would, I think, have been readily admitted and the self-appreciation would have been for the incredible job done by the experiment teams to get their data down under rather extremely off-nominal circumstances.
Don't get me wrong, I have an awful lot of respect for the PIs and engineers who were able to work against a penurious and critical time limit to get their data collected and down to Earth. It was an admirable and incredible performance all around. It still just rings odd to my American ear to hear the off-nominal aspects of the landing itself referred to as extra added accomplishments, when in fact they were serious anomalies that could just as easily have resulted in no data being recovered from Philae.
I guess I just need to chalk it up to the different ways the "European culture" treats such a situation. It surely doesn't reduce my admiration and respect for the teams who were able to turn a potential disaster into a brilliant success.
-the other Doug (With my shield, not yet upon it)
Working for an engineering firm where most of managment were promoted from sales... I tend to agree. But having worked both development and operations in my time I shoiuld say that both organised control and improvisation have their places, it's a question of context. No-one ever landed on a comet before. Meaningful science has been done. The PR folks are spinning the mistakes to be positives.. that's what they're paid to do, and they're paid to do it by managment and ESA culture, not the engineers and scientists.
If ESA managers are like my lot they probably wish they didn't need the inconvinently real-world based engineers and scientists at all...
They say you make your own luck. Sure, some systems failed and that has to be looked at for the next mission, but over all some fantastic engineering gave Philae the edge it needed to pull off that landing.
The serendipity of Philae's landing reminds me of Opportunity's "hole in one" (an expression synonomous with great success). But a slightly different bounce could just as well have landed Opportunity in an inescapable sand trap.
It's a great human acheivement to get a mission to the point where such bounces of fortune even come into play. Boy, Curiosity's landing sure was boring, wasn't it.
Funny that the exploration of dwarf planet 'Ceres' should happen 'in parallel' with dwarf planet Pluto.
(Your pronunciation may vary)
Is it wrong of me to feel the same way about pronunciation that I do about 'true color' ???
Phil
So that means we eat KAY-ray-al for breakfast in the morning....
I will be attending the JPL open house tomorrow Saturday June 9, 2018. If any other Unmannedspaceflight contributors are attending, I would be happy to attempt to meet up so as to put a face to a name. fdewhirst 'at' forsyth 'dot' org
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