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August of Wind: Rare Mars Dust Devil Footage Released

Posted by michael on from the punny-submissions-have-high-acceptance-rates dept.

astrobio writes "Very rare picture released today from Mars Orbital Camera: the image actually captured a dust devil in the act of creating a streak as it climbed an embankment out of a crater. See panorama, larger image here, and in context. Apparently the University of Arizona has a study called Project Matador which is supposed to tornado-chase on Earth, so that Mars-instruments can be hardened against dust devils. Dorothy, it isn't Kansas."

11 comments

  1. Dust Devil by ThereIsNoSporkNeo · · Score: 3, Funny

    To be honest, my first thought was that a dust devil was some sort of critter.

    Sounds like a Tabloid front-page
    "DUST-DEVIL CLIMBS OUT OF MARTIAN CRATER, ONLY TO BE RESTRAINED BY ELVIS"

    --
    With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
  2. maned disasters? by The+Rogue86 · · Score: 1

    could tornado chases on mars become the wave of the future for rich thrill seekers much like the russian trips to space?

    --
    This is how you know you're a geek the power goes out and you are unemployed and unemployable. Yes I know I can't spell
    1. Re:maned disasters? by Demon+Phreak · · Score: 1

      that would be pretty cool. getting thrashed by marsian tornadoes. hmm...

    2. Re:maned disasters? by Misanthropic+Lycanth · · Score: 1

      Martian trailer parks, beware...

      --

      Physics: Making the universe open source.
  3. Why use Flash for this? by DLWormwood · · Score: 1

    This was just a picture, not an animation. The width of the picture would have fit fine on a 1024 wide display, and 800 wide displays would the see the bulk of the image anyway...

    --
    Those who complain about affect & effect on /. should be disemvoweled
  4. Follow up: by dacarr · · Score: 2, Funny
    Orbital cameras around Mars have revealed the whirlwind to have been generated by the ever famous Tasmanian Devil, as it went on a continuous chase after celebrity rabbit Bugs Bunny, apparently as a secret agent deployed by Marvin the Martian.

    Quoth Mr. Bunny on conditions on Mars, "Eh, no decent atmosphere, but somebody has to stop that crazy martian character."

    Neither Mr. Devil nor Mr. Martian were available for comment.

    --
    This sig no verb.
  5. Dust Devils by Blind+Linux · · Score: 4, Interesting

    NASA has pressure-time graphs of dust devils as well as their patterns on their website.
    Interesting findings from the Mars Pathfinder are also shown and detailed there.

  6. Primary link is to some strange format called swf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The link is unreadable with standard web browsing
    tools. I woul expect better from slashdot ....

  7. problem with mime type on swf by David+Frankenstein · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why does Slashdot serve the .swf file with mime type "application/x-shockware-flash" instead of "application/x-shockwave-flash" ? Is it a typo on the server?

  8. enough wind for that? by NiGHTSFTP · · Score: 0, Troll

    Not to mention dont tornadoes need drastic pressure changes to be conceived?

    http://whyfiles.org/013tornado/tornado_main3.htm l

    Oh... DUST DEVIL, my bad. Truly, this is some sort of landmark. Most pointless story ever? Quite possibly.

    --
    http://www.angryburrito.com/ The best, completely unfinished software review site ever.
  9. Re:Primary link is to some strange format called s by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That strange format, swf, is Flash on 97.8% of standard web browsing tools. Among other conveniences it enables low aspect ratio images to be rendered interactively (right-click zoom). Unless standard web browsing is a text browser...and then you just go to other links on that topic