Close. Stone Soup.

Planetary Society Weblog: Phoenix sol 76 update: Digging at Neverland, Cupboard, Stone Soup [...]

Phoenix sees frost...

Awesome! Now they can work on a dawn panorama...

Ooh. Are all those green and blue sparkles in the full-size image (e.g. the green one at bottom centre) transient reflections off ice crystals caught in a single filter? (On a brief look, I haven't found a similar but older false-colour press-release image to compare to.)

Colourisation of the first frost...



"Before and After" image here...

Ah, thanks:



That jibes with the NS article that they'll be looking for perchlorate concentrating at deeper levels.

The beginning of the end.

As this frost starts getting thicker and thicker as time goes on, would it have any particular science value?

And is frost going to be an issue to the point where Phoenix will find itself often shoveling it out of its trenches? Or will Phoenix die before then?

Sad to say...but, yeah. Hurry up, guys, tempis fugit.

Hungry, if the Viking 2 experience provides any sort of reference, no, they won't have to shovel it out; for the first few weeks of winter anyhow it'll sublimate away pretty fast after sunrise. As the days grow shorter, though, it'll persist & pile up; not sure if Phoenix will live long enough to see the ground perpetually covered in frost before there's just not enough solar energy available to keep it powered up.

While it is a sign that temperatures are dropping, they did note that currently the frost is only present earlier than 6 AM. We still have some time left before Phoenix freezes over. It is kind of cool to finally see some frost after speculating so much about it. I had previously noticed a few "frost spot" locations that were apparently being monitored from time to time. This particular site was named "Winkies and Quadlings."

I found one of the previous observations (sol 60) with false colors that most closely matched those of the frost image (sol 79), and slapped together a gif animation showing the scene with and without frost. The frames are straight RGB composites from the raw jpegs.

Very nice indeed, Tom, thank you!

Brr. I feel the cold chill already, and was reminded of this song by The Bangles, a remake of a Simon & Garfunkel original: "Hazy Shade of Winter". She's gotta live fast & die young, unfortunately.

That's a classic song that I haven't heard in ages, nprev. Thanks for the nostalgia fix.
There are plenty of metaphors in those clever lyrics that might be applied to Phoenix's situation.

Very nice animation Tom. As Nick said, BRRRRR!!!!

Had a go myself - slightly wider angle view than yours - which is hanging in the Gallery now...

Thanks for the song link Nick. Not a huge fan of the song itself, but any excuse to see Susanna Hoffs again is greatly appreciated

S and G obviously wrote this verse about the Lazarus mode on Phoenix



Hang on to your hopes, my friend
Thats an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of my life


Roy

Remember everyone, the solar arrays are dark, so therefore will be warmer than the surface as they absorb more solar energy.
Certainly the first frost IS the beginning of the end, averyage Sol temperatures will only get lower now, but I do not think it's signalling the imminent end of the Phoenix Mission & certainly IMO, Sol 124 for the extention mission end is not unreasonable.

What I expect instead, is that surface operations will reduce, as more time will be required to charge the batteries & leep the internal heaters operating.

Perhaps the RA & TEGA will have to be mothballed in the relatively near future, as they do use a lot of power, but the SSI, Meterology suite etc use relatively little & they should operate right to the bitter end.

Interesting observation & certainly now early morning obs should be made compulsory every sol now, to monitor the build up & sublimation of frost.

When does it form?

Before Midnight? After midnight?

Does anyone know what the temperature was when the frost was imaged?

Andrew Brown.