[X] My Assistant

[vikingmars]

Here is a picture just downloaded from Pancam sol 643 at 22:03 LLT
Does anyone knows is Mars is going now throu gh a swarm of meteors ?

[fredk]

I'm sceptical these are meteors, as I explained in the Spirit The Astrophotographer thread. Even this latest long streak would've been an incredibly bright fireball. Even though they call them "meteor searches" in the planning sequences, at the very bottom of this press release image page it says

"Bright streaks in some parts of the images aren't stars or meteors or unidentified flying objects, but are caused by solar and galactic cosmic rays striking the camera's detector."

And earlier

"Scientists use the images to assess the cameras' sensitivity and to search for evidence of nighttime clouds or haze."

But on the evening of sol 643, Spirit took an extremely interesting series of pancam images, eerily reminiscent of my "suggestion" in the first post of the Spirit The Astrophotographer thread. There are five sequential images of the same region of sky. In the attached image I tried to sum these images, but I'm sure the experts could do a better job. The result clearly shows the trails as arcs around what must be the south Martian celestial pole off to the left, though I haven't ID'd the stars yet. It's a spectacular shot!

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[AndyG]

...The result clearly shows the trails as arcs around what  must be the south Martian celestial pole off to the left, though I haven't ID'd the stars yet.  It's a spectacular shot!

It's lovely!

I've made a stab at placing the Mars' South Pole location relative to the map, but I'm away from any useful starcharts at the moment. Anyone like to hazard a guess of where we are, from the annotated image?

Regards,

Andy G