Dust Storm Options

[avkillick]

Now that's a concept! Miss the alarm - so stay in bed for the day. I could work with that

always a new twist for the programmers:

"...The morning after a deep sleep, the rover wakes up when solar panels start putting out a prescribed level of energy. However, a dust storm in the Meridiani region reduced sunshine enough on the morning of sol 628 that Opportunity did not wake from deep sleep early enough for the first scheduled activities of that sol. The rover's onboard software properly put Opportunity into self-protective automode for the day,..."

So the programmers now have to program in anticipation of the expected solar panel output as diminished by expected tau for the coming day.

[ljk4-1]

FOR RELEASE: 9;00 am (EST) November 3, 2005

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC05-34a

MARS KICKS UP THE DUST AS IT MAKES CLOSEST APPROACH TO EARTH

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped this picture of Mars on October
28, within a day of its closest approach to Earth on the night of
October 29. The large regional dust storm appears as the brighter,
redder cloudy region in the middle of the planet's disk. This storm,
which measures 930 miles (1500 km) has been churning in the planet's
equatorial regions for several weeks now, and it is likely responsible
for the reddish, dusty haze and other dust clouds seen across this
hemisphere of the planet. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys High
Resolution Imager took this image when the red planet was 43 million
miles (69 million km) from Earth. Mars won't be this close again to
Earth until 2018. Mars is now in its warmest months, closest to the Sun
in its orbit, resulting in a smaller than normal south polar ice cap
which has largely sublimated with the approaching summer.

Credit: NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA),
J. Bell (Cornell University), and M. Wolff (Space Science
Institute)

For the full story, please visit:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2005/34

http://heritage.stsci.edu/2005/34

For additional information, please contact Jim Bell, Cornell
University, 402 Space Sciences Building, Ithaca, NY 14853,
(phone) 607-255-5911, (e-mail) jfb8@cornell.edu, or

Mike Wolff, Space Science Institute, 4750 Walnut St., #205,
Boulder, CO 80301, (phone) 262-790-1356, (e-mail)
wolff@spacescience.org, or

Keith Noll, Hubble Heritage Team, Space Telescope Science
Institute,3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, Md. 21218, (phone)
410-338-1828, (fax) 410-338-4579, (e-mail) noll@stsci.edu.

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by
the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc.
(AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, Md. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project
of international cooperation between NASA and the European
Space Agency (ESA).

[Tman]

Woow, that's another highlight from Hubble! Mars in action.

And last but not least, it give us the chance to look closer at Oppy's position in comparison to the storm from 10.28.

Tried to overlay a map from USGS Mars General Image Viewer:

http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/oppy_dstormkarte.gif

Oppy's position is directly next to the "M" from the "MER". A bit more to the right than the arrow in the official image today.

[jamescanvin]

Woow, that's another highlight from Hubble! Mars in action.

And last but not least, it give us the chance to look closer at Oppy's position in comparison to the storm from 10.28.

Tried to overlay a map from USGS Mars General Image Viewer:

http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/oppy_dstormkarte.gif

Oppy's position is directly next to the "M" from the "MER". A bit more to the right than the arrow in the official image today.

Very nice! Thanks Tman.

[Bill Harris]

There does not appear to have been a dust deposition problem with the recent dust storm; it seems to have been a cleaning event.

Sundial L456 images from Sol 594 and Sol 644.

--Bill

[lyford]

This would be good news - seems the answer is blowin in the wind after all.

Though am I the only one that thinks "cleaning event" sounds like some horrible euphemism?

" Heinamackafrau?"

I will gladly trade eine kleine spreckles on the hazcam for clean solar panels.

[jaredGalen]

Sundial L456 images from Sol 594 and Sol 644.

--Bill

What do you think that white stain on the left of the dial is?

[edstrick]

I was looking at that marking on the left side of the sundial post and it's irregular border and the only thing that came to mind was "spark discharge".... I'm wondering if it's ultrafine dust adhering in a pattern involving a corona discharge or something. Wild-ass-guess speculation, but that thing's weird!

I'd love to see current pics of that aluminum pole with a donut on top.. I've forgotten which antenna that is... Earlier in the missions, there were two elliptical patches of dust adhering to it in a distinctive pattern that I suspected might be due to electrostatic attraction or adhesion of dust involving strong electromagnetic fields at that point. I'd have to extensively dig for a pic that shows it well.

[slinted]

The bright ...splotch is a persistant feature that showed up sometime between the last sundial images taken on sol 620 and the first ones taken on sol 621. That sol was less than a week before the large dust storm that came so close to Opportunity, and during the period described by Dr. Mark Lemmon in the space.com story quoted by Rakhir in post #33 of this thread:

"We started seeing more and more dusting on the solar panels," he added. "And we have indirect evidence that these storms are windy. We've seen material blown out of the rover tracks over the last two weeks."

The appearance of this marking (which, based on the conditions at the time, I'd guess to be a windblown dust deposit) might have been the moment of peak winds, and probably "points" in the direction from which the wind came.

[Bill Harris]

I have no idea what that white "splat" is. I noticed it as I processed the image, but decided to let comments here go where they may. "White" colors imply sulfate salts and the splattered nature of the mark and it's timing implies a wind-blown collision, so I'll let it go at that. I'll imagine (or not _imagine_) that it is bacterial or frost...

What is the sundial post made of? I'm thinking anodized aluminum, but I can't find a reference on it.

--Bill

[RNeuhaus]

The pictures on Sundial are of different filters: LR1, LR2, LR3, LR4, LR5, LR6, LR7, and LR8. Maybe, due to different filters, we are seeing different clarity and colors on the top ball and also the borders of the surface.

Rodolfo

[mike]

Maybe we should land a rover that has nothing but ball-topped poles of varying heights and see what ends up plastered to them as the sols pass. Call it "Maybe We'll Get Lucky".

It looks to me like that splat was created from a single collision, and that whatever hit it wasn't dense enough to damage the pole in any noticeable way.. Salty snowball?

[ljk4-1]

Do students and others still use the sundials to tell the local time of day on Mars with? I haven't heard much about that since they first landed.

[RNeuhaus]

Do students and others still use the sundials to tell the local time of day on Mars with?  I haven't heard much about that since they first landed.

Visit the following URL to learn more about Sundial : Sundial details

1) It is used to calibrate and adjust colors of PANCAM (4 different colors on the corners)
2) It is used to see the martian's sky color (two halph circle mirror plates on the border)
3) To track the time on Mars watch by its star corona on the bottom of the pole. (only used by students).


The sundials, positioned on each rover's rear solar panel, will help the Athena team adjust the rovers' panoramic cameras. Scientists will use the colored blocks in the corners of each sundial to calibrate the color in images of the landscape so that Mars can be seen in its true colors. And pictures of the shadows cast by a sundial's center post, or gnomon, will allow adjustments for brightness.

"On Mars, you don't know what color anything is," said Nye. "The Martian sky is so pink that it makes everything pink, and so you want to know if the object you're looking at is really pink or if it's pink light bouncing off the sky."

The grayscale calibration rings surrounding the gnomon represent the orbits of Mars and Earth, with two dots representing the planets. A keen observer might note that the dots are in the positions that Mars and Earth would have been in at the time of the Surveyor landing.

Each sundial is inscribed with the words "Two Worlds, One Sun" and bears the name "Mars" in 17 languages, including Bengali, Inuktituk, Lingala and Malay-Indonesian, as well as ancient Sumerian and Mayan. Four gold panels along the sides of the sundials are inscribed with stick-figure drawings of people, as well as a message to future Mars explorers:

"People launched this spacecraft from Earth in our year 2003. It arrived on Mars in 2004. We built its instruments to study the Martian environment and to look for signs of life. We used this post and these patterns to adjust our cameras and as a sundial to reckon the passage of time. The drawings and words represent the people of Earth. We sent this craft in peace to learn about Mars' past and about our future. To those who visit here, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery."

Rodolfo

[ljk4-1]

It looks like the dust storm is starting to fade. This image is posted here with permission.

I wonder why the 1971 storm was global and not any since?