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Posted by: brellis Oct 11 2010, 05:54 PM

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!

Posted by: djellison Oct 14 2010, 07:13 AM

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=34.131114,-118.508642&spn=0.016163,0.027444&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=34.131073,-118.508743&panoid=m_1vu9o9xE0br78_ONDj_w&cbp=12,354.38,,0,16.61

That sort of place Dan?

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Oct 14 2010, 01:24 PM

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.

Posted by: brellis Oct 14 2010, 04:08 PM

Re: Van Nuys Giga Pan

100 jokes are swirling through my tiny brain.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 14 2010, 04:54 PM

Ned Kelly! Funny... yes, it looks just like him!

Phil

Posted by: HughFromAlice Oct 14 2010, 09:35 PM

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)

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 14 2010, 11:19 PM

That's no Crocodile Dundee! A virtual Mars Bar for the first person to correctly identify the shadow in my picture.

Phil

Posted by: helvick Oct 14 2010, 11:31 PM

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.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 14 2010, 11:37 PM

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

Posted by: centsworth_II Oct 14 2010, 11:41 PM

Whatever happened to "Keeping UMSF at an 'impressively high level"?

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 14 2010, 11:48 PM

Oh yeah, I forgot about that...

Phil

Posted by: brellis Oct 14 2010, 11:53 PM

Wild guess -- it's the hat of Sherlock Holmes?

***and yes, this thread is side-tracked -- for scientific investigations

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 15 2010, 12:12 AM

What else can we do when there are no pictures from Mars?

Sherlock Holmes? What's antipodal about him?

Phil

Posted by: nprev Oct 15 2010, 12:59 AM

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!

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 15 2010, 01:02 AM

British... with Ozzie roots... and there's a clue in the filename...

Phil

Posted by: nprev Oct 15 2010, 01:49 AM

Ha! Barry "Bazza" McKenzie?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McKenzie

Posted by: Astro0 Oct 15 2010, 04:11 AM

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...

Posted by: HughFromAlice Oct 15 2010, 06:03 AM

Yes -

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 15 2010, 09:19 AM

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

Posted by: nprev Oct 15 2010, 01:21 PM

Indeed. (However, I'm diggin' my vMars Bar...my first! )

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 15 2010, 01:51 PM

Hey - we've been relegated to the junk drawer! Yeah, OK, we've finished now.

Phil

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Oct 15 2010, 01:54 PM

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.

Posted by: centsworth_II Oct 15 2010, 02:45 PM

Right on!

Posted by: Floyd Oct 15 2010, 03:46 PM

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.

Posted by: hendric Oct 15 2010, 04:08 PM

How about "Parking Orbit"?

Posted by: HughFromAlice Oct 16 2010, 01:38 AM

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!!)

Posted by: Den Nov 1 2010, 09:58 PM

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?

Posted by: Tesheiner Nov 2 2010, 08:13 AM

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.

Posted by: Den Nov 2 2010, 09:35 AM

What I see is definitely JPEG artifacts (blocking).
Re "quality 9": yes, quality 9 will have some distortions. But it's not true that quality 9.5 is not possible.
Do you mind trying other program to do the conversion?
For example, in Gimp JPEG compression can be set with finer granularity - the scale is not 1..10 but 1..100.
I use 95 for photos where I do want negligible data loss.

Posted by: jamescanvin Nov 2 2010, 10:57 AM

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.

Posted by: djellison Nov 2 2010, 01:24 PM

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.

Posted by: walfy Nov 7 2010, 06:57 PM

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.

Posted by: Burmese Nov 9 2010, 06:16 PM

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.

Posted by: djellison Nov 9 2010, 06:41 PM

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?

Posted by: Stu Nov 9 2010, 06:51 PM

/\

What he said.

Posted by: centsworth_II Nov 9 2010, 08:51 PM

Perhaps true, but "...not claiming 100000% scientific accuracy" is not much of a disclaimer.

I would not consider someone an idiot if they did not realize from that post the nature of the image. Also, I hate to see such base language used in an otherwise reputable forum.

Posted by: djellison Nov 9 2010, 08:59 PM

'Base Language'. Really? REALLY?

I guess your standards are catastrophically different to my own.

It's about the politest word I could possibly use to describe people such as those that wrote at length about the conspiracy proven by Emily's Cassini image.





Care to quote that in full and not selectively pull out a small section of it?

"And, as always, just for fun - not claiming 100000% scientific accuracy - here's a pic showing Endurance (top), Santa Maria (middle) and Victoria roughly to scale..."

That's more than enough disclaimer.

Of course, you are free to add your own disclaimer to your own contributions to UMSF. I notice you've not felt it necessary to do so :

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=21641 ( OMG What happened to Jupiters rings!! )
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=21775 ( What the? GIANT YELLOW CIRCLE ON MARS )
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=21384 ( Street sign on mars clear sign of intelligence )
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=21248 ( See - they sent a second rover to hide the evidence of life, how else did they take this photo? )
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=20887 ( Mimas is going to impact Tehthys ! )


I will not be doing so. It's unnecessary.

Posted by: centsworth_II Nov 9 2010, 09:09 PM

Now that we're in the junk drawer, I guess I'll respond.

A couple of different issues were mixed in your post. Someone misinterpreting Stu's image is a very different situation than someone claiming Emily's image is a NASA cover up. I think it is unfair to lump them into the same category.

Posted by: centsworth_II Nov 9 2010, 09:15 PM

Definitely enough for UMSF regulars. Not clear at all to the passers by. I'm not calling for more of a disclaimer, I'm calling for less insider snobbery. It would be perfectly understandable for a casual reader to misunderstand that image. No big fault of Stu's, but no big fault of the reader's either. Certainly no reason to lump them in with the worst of the conspiracy theorists.

Posted by: djellison Nov 9 2010, 09:20 PM

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)

Posted by: centsworth_II Nov 9 2010, 09:42 PM

Posted by: djellison Nov 9 2010, 10:01 PM

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.

Posted by: Astro0 Nov 9 2010, 10:14 PM

Ahem.
Discussion over folks.

Posted by: jasedm Nov 9 2010, 10:23 PM

Good call.

Posted by: Hungry4info Nov 20 2010, 10:54 PM

Indeed; I felt my answer addressed his question. The inclination of the moon's orbit isn't a function of Mars' obliquity.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Nov 20 2010, 11:18 PM

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

Posted by: Hungry4info Nov 21 2010, 12:04 AM

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.

Posted by: stevesliva Nov 21 2010, 12:17 AM

If I'm reading it right, this paper:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-3881/135/4/1151/fulltext
seems to hypothesize an "oblateness force" on Phobos and Deimos that keeps them in equatorial orbits throughout Mars obliquity cycle because of relative small sizes and close distances of the moons.

There is another mention somewhere on the web that does say that Mars is coincidentally in the middle of its obliquity cycle at the present time, though.

Posted by: Hungry4info Nov 21 2010, 12:25 AM

@stevesliva

Interesting!
I was wrong.
Thanks for that. I've learned something new. I'll have to research this more.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Nov 22 2010, 06:11 PM

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

Posted by: NW71 Nov 22 2010, 10:48 PM

Really interested in this discussion. I too know nothing of orbital dynamics, but the above wasn't always the case was it?

The moon is becoming more distant at about the rate of 4cm a year - roughly the rate your fingernails grow so back before the dinosaurs roamed the Earth the Moon was considerably closer to the Earth. So why did the Moon not become locked in an equatorial orbit?

Neil

Posted by: Hungry4info Nov 22 2010, 11:02 PM

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.

Posted by: ngunn Nov 22 2010, 11:26 PM

Maybe it got locked soon after it's formation but then gradually unlocked as it moved away??

Posted by: Hungry4info Nov 23 2010, 02:06 AM

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.

Posted by: Shaka Feb 28 2011, 08:21 PM

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!

Posted by: Stu Feb 28 2011, 08:35 PM

Who's mentioned berries in this thread? I can find no reference.

Posted by: Shaka Feb 28 2011, 08:57 PM

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?

Posted by: Stu Feb 28 2011, 09:19 PM

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

Posted by: ilbasso Apr 8 2011, 09:08 PM

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.

Posted by: Sunspot Apr 8 2011, 09:44 PM

This same scenario interrupted the Galileo entry probe science transmission... grrr

Posted by: JayB Apr 8 2011, 10:08 PM

Maybe not:

"Because JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology, its employees are NASA contractors, not civil servants; they would be expected to work through a shutdown, JPL spokeswoman Jane Platt said April 8. "We will keep working," she said."

http://www.space.com/11344-nasa-government-shutdown-500-workers.html

Edit:
Scott's not sounding worried
Per-sol drive distance limits lifted for Opportunity -- and we have a sol coming up where we can take advantage of that. Maybe 160m/sol!

Posted by: djellison Apr 9 2011, 12:25 AM

Definitely not. JPL will be open for business as usual.

Posted by: marsophile Apr 9 2011, 12:56 AM

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.

Posted by: vikingmars Jun 16 2011, 02:19 PM

Feet, pounds, miles... I just love those old Imperial units.
They are filled up with dusty memories.
But it's a pity they are still used today in the USA.
One can hope they were not used to design the MSL mission...

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jun 16 2011, 02:46 PM

Why not? One unit of measure is the same as the next when used consistently and accurately. The modern industrial civilization that we know today from the 19th and 20th centuries was built using those units of measure. The problems come when a careless person transposes between respective systems. Of course, MSL wasn't built using those units, but even today in the era of not just calculators but complex computers at everyone's fingertips the convenience of the metric system is not necessarily the advantage that it was when engineers were writing equations by hand to solve problems. The programs that calculate complex orbital trajectory would work just as smoothly in furlongs per fortnight as long as all the units were correctly defined.

Posted by: fredk Jun 18 2011, 02:41 AM

So that would never be a problem if they stopped using two systems and settled on a standard! The problem isn't what the system is. It's just that having two systems in use is asking for trouble.

Posted by: nprev Jun 18 2011, 05:50 AM

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.)

Posted by: Juramike Jun 18 2011, 02:28 PM

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.

Posted by: Bobby Jun 21 2011, 03:47 PM

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.

Posted by: Stu Jun 21 2011, 03:59 PM

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.

Posted by: diane Jun 21 2011, 06:11 PM

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

Posted by: djellison Jun 21 2011, 06:20 PM

Then you can figure it out for yourself. I'm sure you know how.

Why not figure it out, add them, then share it with the rest of the forum - rather than asking someone who already spends HUGE amounts of time giving you amazing resources for nothing, to do even more work.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jun 21 2011, 07:21 PM

Chainsaw: 0.6

Posted by: tedstryk Jun 21 2011, 08:11 PM

Gotta admire your work ethic, Bobby

Posted by: Stu Jun 21 2011, 08:35 PM

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?

Posted by: climber Jul 8 2011, 12:03 PM

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.

Posted by: Tesheiner Jul 8 2011, 04:58 PM

It is 9km and 10km E, respectively.

Posted by: climber Jul 9 2011, 08:43 AM

hum hum
Google Mars give me 17,702 km in strait line to Eagle, it can't be 9 & 10 Eduardo.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jul 9 2011, 12:22 PM

"17,702 km"

Are you sure that wasn't to Deimos?

Phil

Posted by: climber Jul 9 2011, 12:56 PM

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

Posted by: centsworth_II Jul 9 2011, 01:15 PM

That's an interesting way of putting it rather than saying the coma in Europe replaces the decimal point used in the US. But then you would have to write: 17,702 km,m

Posted by: climber Jul 9 2011, 01:29 PM

Ok thanks. I'll paid more attention next time
Now, I'm still interested in knowing where we are from Eagle.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jul 9 2011, 04:48 PM

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

Posted by: climber Jul 9 2011, 05:41 PM

Thanks Phil, very handy.
This confirm 16S/10E

Posted by: Tesheiner Jul 10 2011, 04:32 PM

Mmm, really?

Posted by: climber Jul 10 2011, 06:10 PM

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?

Posted by: NW71 Jul 10 2011, 08:49 PM

I'll be very happy to be put right on this from those with a more scientific background than myself but I think when Climber refers to Europe in this example he is referring to continental Europe rather than including the UK. In Britain, I would hope I could speak for the majority in saying that I would read 17,702 km in the same way it is read in the US rather than the European interpretation. That is to say as nearly 18 thousand kms as opposed to nearly 18 kms.

This is not to say which is right, just commenting on how data is interpreted/shown in different ways.

Neil

Posted by: machi Jul 10 2011, 10:46 PM

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).

Posted by: Explorer1 Jul 11 2011, 01:18 AM

I remember the preference being 'thousand million' instead of billion.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jan 4 2013, 03:28 PM

deceived?

Posted by: Paolo Jan 4 2013, 03:35 PM

disappointed I mean... a false friend between French and English

Posted by: TheAnt Jan 17 2013, 11:02 AM

Junk Drawer? I guess this one fits right in here:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-solar-system-discovered-four-feet-from-earth,1094/

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jan 17 2013, 02:37 PM

This is how I know the story is fake. Van Nuys is 350 miles from Palo Alto.

Posted by: dburt Feb 7 2013, 07:49 AM

Despite what has popularly been stated, there may (or may not: an old discussion) have been standing water at Meridiani, and there probably was acid water (or at least volcanic or impact-generated steam), but it's highly unlikely that there ever was standing, acidic water for any significant time period anywhere on Mars, because it would have been neutralized by the broken fresh basaltic rock that litters the surface and constitutes the fractured crust. This is elementary high school chemistry. Even hematite dissolves in acid.

As Roger Burns noted long ago in proposing jarosite formation on Mars, acid salts such as jarosite are a form of crystalline or fossil acid. They indicate that ephemeral acidic waters (or steam) have quickly evaporated or been frozen before they could react with the rocks around them. This is an old observation for UMSF, already discussed extensively, that I repeat here only for newcomers. No further discussion is needed.
- dburt

Posted by: serpens Feb 10 2013, 09:43 AM

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.

Posted by: dburt Feb 10 2013, 06:44 PM

Umm. If we're going to get historical, let us certainly not forget the directly-observed-and-mapped-by-famous-astronomers canals of Mars, or the still observed annual color changes, which everyone once "knew" were caused by seasonal changes in water-fed vegetation (as on Earth). When it comes to putative evidence for water on Mars, past OR present, I think a whole lot of humilty is called for, even among those who pontificate anonymously on this forum. (And, before anyone gets upset, I could be thinking of the evidence allegedly provided by young gullies here, on which I personally published several probably-mistaken papers about 10 years ago, instead of that allegedly provided by Meridiani cross-beds or spherules. In the case of gullies I basically went along with the conventional wisdom, and appear to have been wrong.)
- dburt

[MOD]: And this post is a contribution to a list from credible sources as defined by EGD how?

Posted by: dburt Feb 11 2013, 06:11 AM

[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

Posted by: Floyd Feb 11 2013, 01:12 PM

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

Posted by: serpens Feb 12 2013, 02:39 AM

Couldn't agree more. There are an awful lot of conflicting hypotheses on this subject from credible sources (in terms of credentials, experience and position) and this is quite right and proper. All possible explanations for observed phenomena must be considered as the evidence is sifted. But proof is a different matter. There is certainly proof of ice and proof of water vapour on Mars and with Phoenix we actually saw the transition in phase on the mirror. But there is no proof of existing water. With apologies to EGD, in colloquial use ice and water are different things and since the initial request was directed to a talk to schools and general public the semantics are somewhat significant.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Feb 12 2013, 05:05 AM

And I didn't say the phases weren't relevant, I said THIS TOPIC isn't the place to compare, contrast and debate them. If someone wrote a paper, or if some agency held a press conference, they almost certainly would have made that distinction -- liquid, ice, vapor, gas or whatever -- with regard to their "discovery".

All we were looking for in this discussion was a LIST of "discoveries" not a discussion of them.

Posted by: centsworth_II Feb 12 2013, 05:19 AM

I would be more concerned with making clear that not all ice on Mars is water ice, that much of it is CO2.

Posted by: brellis Feb 12 2013, 05:38 AM

2 fine cents there, centsworth II

Posted by: centsworth_II Dec 24 2013, 02:38 PM

The reflection seems to show an extended arm holding a camera. Schmitt can be seen looking on (circled) but not obviously taking a picture.

Posted by: Ian R Dec 24 2013, 03:03 PM

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).

Posted by: Ian R Dec 24 2013, 03:19 PM

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.

Posted by: dvandorn Dec 3 2014, 06:45 PM

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)

Posted by: stone Dec 3 2014, 07:23 PM

I look at it and see that nobody would gain anything by openly making Philae the biggest mishap ever happened, even worse than Beagle2.
There is a public which wants heroes and nice stories with happy end. The people who know enough know that the landing was closer to a crash than to a controlled landing and that without the luck and certain features of the Lander the story would have ended as a big tragedy. But these people like space and want more money for missions. The politicians and ESA bureaucrats gain nothing by standing up pointing at some people and say he is guilty of this misery. The US way to deal with a controversy has changed over the last several decades and to make a big fight with only losers looks like the new US standard.

stone

Posted by: jmknapp Dec 3 2014, 08:01 PM

But the (hypothesized) contact with the ground partway through, not rising to the level of an official bounce, throws a wrinkle in that calculation, if it remains unknown where that contact occurred.

About the bounces cited as an accomplishment, I read it as a little dark humor. It is remarkable how the idea of multiple landings caught the public imagination though. For a couple of days after the landing, it seemed to me that everyone I came across was talking about the bouncing comet lander. I was in a McDonald's to get coffee the next morning and there was the usual morning group of white-haired guys, some with neck beards, this time talking about Philae and spacecraft in general, chuckling about the bounce. Whether partially by luck or not, the ESA outreach on this couldn't have been better.

Posted by: stone Dec 3 2014, 08:21 PM

The person how made a lot of contributions to the Lander in the beginning, Dr. Helmut Rosenbauer, Director at Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy, would have had a good time hearing this. Rosenbauer wanted to have a bouncing or hopping machinery built into the Lander. This was de-scoped a long time ago. Rosenbauer was in the beginning the PI of COSAC, but he also coordinated a lot of work on the landing gear and the separation mechanism.

stone

Posted by: Gerald Dec 3 2014, 09:57 PM

I'm with stone, that the excitement about the bouncing should be seen in the background of a long-lasting discussion about asteroid http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/pr395.pdf.

Posted by: 4th rock from the sun Dec 3 2014, 11:34 PM

Precision, quality, organization are no longer valued.
Make-do, funny, improvisation and luck seem to be valued in today's society.

But from a PR point of view... it worked brilliantly!

Posted by: marsbug Dec 3 2014, 11:45 PM

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...

Posted by: centsworth_II Dec 3 2014, 11:51 PM

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.

Posted by: SFJCody Jan 12 2015, 04:02 PM

Funny that the exploration of dwarf planet 'Ceres' should happen 'in parallel' with dwarf planet Pluto.

(Your pronunciation may vary)

Posted by: Mongo Jan 13 2015, 06:16 PM

As far as I can tell, the Classical Latin pronunciation of 'Ceres' would be like English KAY-race.

And as an aside, the Classical Latin pronunciation of 'Uranus' would be like English oo-RAW-noose

Posted by: djellison Jan 13 2015, 07:34 PM

I think the somewhat tongue in cheek pronunciation comment was regarding the inclusion or exclusion of the prefix 'dwarf'

Posted by: Xerxes Jan 13 2015, 07:39 PM

I think it's more like KEH-race and OO-rah-noos (former OO like cool, latter oo like book). As Latin evolved, the final /s/ sound of Ceres softened into KEH-rays with a soft buzzy /z/ ending.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jan 13 2015, 08:00 PM

Is it wrong of me to feel the same way about pronunciation that I do about 'true color' ???

Phil

Posted by: stevesliva Jan 13 2015, 09:54 PM

So Phil, is it peridemeter and apodermatitis or what, with regards to whatever the heck the greeks called this Ceres thigamajigger...?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Posted by: Gladstoner Jan 13 2015, 10:34 PM

So that means we eat KAY-ray-al for breakfast in the morning....

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Jan 13 2015, 10:35 PM

I'm personally fine with the typical English pronunciation of Ceres.

In the one particular case of ou-rah-NOOS (Greek pronunciation and stress), I think a distinct improvement over "yer ..."

Posted by: vikingmars Jan 15 2015, 12:36 PM

Thanks Mongo : it's OK for "key-race", as Xerxes says.
But, regarding Uranus in Latin language, it's close to "oo-ra-noos" (no "w", no "e"). The "w" comes when English people pronounce Latin, which sounds funny to French, Spanish and Italian people The "u" sound in Latin is very close to the pronounciation of the "ou" in English you have in "y-ou". So it should really sound like "ou-ra-nous" in Latin language. And maybe that the tonic accent/stress was on the middle syllable, sounding then like "ou-ra-nous"...

Posted by: Mongo Jan 15 2015, 01:49 PM

I had originally had the pronunciation spelled as oo-RA-noos, but decided to use actual English words to ensure that there was no doubt (among native English-speakers, anyway) of the pronunciation. 'RA' by itself could have been pronounced like the sound in RAT instead of like RAW, so I simply used the word RAW, where the 'W' is silent. The 'ou' letter combination in English is ambiguous, the sound in 'you' is quite different from the sound in 'out'. So is the 'oo' letter combination ('pool' versus 'book') but in isolation it is understood to be the same as the sound in 'you'. Finally, 'noos' by itself could be pronounced with a terminal 'z' sound (like 'news' without the consonantal 'y' sound), while 'noose' is pronounced with a terminal 's' sound.

And this is getting fairly far off the thread topic.

Posted by: Floyd Jun 8 2018, 03:31 PM

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