800Whrs+ Staying Up Late ideas Options

[djellison]

With Spirit producing an annoyingly large amount of power given her current predicament, the time may well have come to re-open the Gusev astronomy society. Anyone have any dusk / nightime observation ideas?

[Deimos]

Keep the ideas coming. Not surprisingly, many of these are being considered. I'll keep some of my own quiet for now . The weekend plan does contain the beginning of a twilight characterization, with a 20-pair movie starting in the moments before sunset. It won't continue until Venus and Earth are in the frame, but a later instance should get this. These will be similar to the Pathfinder pre-dawn cloud images in some ways, but the filters are chosen for ability to constrain interesting parameters rather than for pretty pictures (although the latter may be doable for those so inclined). Earth will be iffy, Venus should be fine, Mercury-no. Earth, Venus and Jupiter have all been imaged before, of course, and always in the twilight.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_earth_040311.html
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins...projects_3.html

Spirit needs to use energy at night to avoid overheating when using (even shunting) the same energy during the day and to keep getting good battery data. So there is a reason for a specific night focus (not that noon dust devil movies are a bad thing). The parameters are not clear (to me), and there will be some exploratory stuff (heating tests...). But last time we did this, we were limited to 20-30 minute chunks most of the time. It is time dependent, but the rovers can use energy quickly when active at night.

Zodiacal light is a no-go. There will not be dedicated orbiter imaging (I expect), but preliminary plans for "nighttime opacity" imaging make it multi-purpose, with one consideration being to maximize utility in the event of a serendipitous detection. But since we missed ODY's trail when we know where ODY was, I'm not optimistic. The UV aurora idea is also a no-go, but there are other similar if still unlikely possibilities.

I imagine things with more compelling science rationale will be done first, but other factors may influence the timing (some times of night are more accessible than others). I've scoped out a sunset mosaic, but am not planning to push it just yet. It won't beat the 489 mosaic in artistic merit. If you look at the Calypso pan in the "unstuck" thread and work left from Husband Hill to the first rock that juts up, sunset should be a be less than a frame left of there (from memory, not my notes).

Oh, and we just missed a real good near-occultation of a bright star by Phobos (Phobos moves too fast to really show an occultation with Pancam).