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78,000 Mars Global Surveyor Photos Online
angkor writes: "AP is reporting that the Mars Global Surveyor snapped its 100,000th picture of Mars. The Viking orbiters took about 55,000 total. Even better is that over 78,000 of the images are online in the (MOC Gallery). You get to click on a map of Mars to zoom into a specific region. Wow."
It's a damn sight more interesting than some crap about filesystems for Red Hat.
From image 035A72 taken by Viking orbiter:
LAT C= +40.90 UL= +41.14 UR= +40.28 LL= +41.52 LR= +40.65
LONG C= 9.52 UL= 8.76 UR= 9.28 LL= 9.77 LR= 10.28
The region is called Cydonia, so you should be able to find it in the gallery. Not that the face will be recognizable, since it was a lighting artifact in the first place.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
In stellar astronomy, people have used pictures of the sky for a long time to quickly and easily search for interesting objects like binary stars, galaxies or variables. Many modern celestial maps are just digitized sky images.
I suppose that a set of full scale photo map of Mars taken at different times will allow us to look for any climate or seasonal surface changes - which would be useful in a search for Matian life forms. Given a broad enough time scale, you might also be able to look for evidence of erosion features - but I doubt we'll be able to see such processes on Mars in my lifetime.
If nothing else, it'd be interesting to look closely at the boundary between the northern and southern hemispheric regions.
In illa quae ultra sunt
Where are the other 22,000!? That _must_ be where the alien civilizations exist. We must force the government to admit to the existence of life on Mars, and let us in on the communication they have undoubtedly been having with them for the past 50 years!
This has been satire.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT