More Dust Devils Options

[Burmese]

More *yawn* dust devils (2)

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...56P0660L0M1.JPG

Spirit would be hard pressed, I think, to make it through a day of navcam/pancam shots of the plains and -not- catch a dust devil in the act.

[RNeuhaus]

Has the Dust Devil ever striked over the Columbia Hill where Spirit is? I am afraid that, in the near future, Spirit will have to go down and stay on a zone where occurs more often the Dust Devils to clean her solar power panels....

Rodolfo

[slinted]

Has the Dust Devil ever striked over the Columbia Hill where Spirit is?

It is difficult to say how often dust devils pass over the hills. They are much easier to spot from a distance, especially out on the Gusev plains where we can see for many kms and have the dark background for contrast.

That being said, I think the closest activity has been spotted on the northern face of the West Spur area, on both sol 531 and sol 532. In the sol 531 movie, we can see a dd just off the left side of the field of view, in just a single frame. Between that frame and the next, it appears to pass across the entire field of view, cleaning a significant amount of bright dust off the area visible as the red streak in the previous frames. The enhancement looks strange because it uses the darker, already swept ground as the 'background', because they are the majority of the frames. Hence, the red streak in the first few frames is the enhancement of the brigter dust which was later blown away.

[slinted]

On sol 543, Spirit was lucky enough to capture a nearby dust devil in 2 frames (source 1 and 2) 20 seconds apart, with pancam.

[aldo12xu]

What's happening in the upper right of these animated dust devil GIFs from sol 542 and 543? Are those bright splotches image artifacts or is that the dust devil before it hits the surface?

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~lemmon/mer_dd/...hanced_542a.gif

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~lemmon/mer_dd/...hanced_543a.gif

[ilbasso]

I used my ultra-high-precision image enhancer to zoom in on the dark speck in the second movie. Can't be 100% sure what that object near the dust devil was, but this is what the image processing showed:

[Decepticon]

LOL!

[mike]

Oh my God, there's an early-1900's-style woman biking in a dust devil on Mars! You should report this to the appropriate authorities, ilbasso.

You may also want to get a new wig, since yours is rather obviously a wig. Unless that's the whole idea. In which case I question the point. Much as I question the point of the woman in the dust devil, in fact.

[Tman]

Even it seems we have here a witch with her besom... but as we can see, here on Mars they use moderner technology when flying!

[dvandorn]

It really was no miracle,
What happened was just this:
The Hills began to twitch,
The craters took a stitch,
And Spirit's panel hinges
Started to unhitch...
Just then, the witch,
To satisfy an itch,
Went riding on her broomstick,
Thumbing for a hitch!

-the other Doug

[paxdan]

Went riding on her broomstick,

so that's what has been sweeping spirits deck clean.

[aldo12xu]

Of course! How could we have missed it all this time!!

[Bob Shaw]

Of course! How could we have missed it all this time!!

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!

The super-res image should be sent to Project OZMA!

[dilo]

Mars attack! Sol568
An entire DD moving front... I counted 7, maybe more... need avatar update!

[aldo12xu]

Holy #@*!#, run for cover Spirit!!