Close Mars Means Close-Up Pictures

Guttata writes " space.com has posted 1 of 2 images taken by Hubble last night, dubbed the best Mars globe photo ever taken. The second image will be posted at 4 p.m. ET. Cool!" aderuwe points to a report on the Hubble site itself. Finally, dpp writes "Space.com is reporting how astronomers using the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) here at the Joint Astronomy Centre have made what are thought to be the sharpest ground-based images of Mars to date. They'll be studying the spectra of the infrared light to look for the signatures of minerals that would indicate the past presence of liquid water, which could have hosted life."

Comments

Search for life in Europa instead

[Brahmastra]

Europa looks like a far better candidate for water and life than mars. We should start sending probes to land on Europa as soon as possible.

Re:Search for life in Europa instead

[Anonymous Coward]

All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landings there.

Man, don't you pay attention?

Re:Search for life in Europa instead

[kinnell]

The trouble is that in order to search for life on Europa, you would need a submarine probe which can drill through several kilometers of ice. It would then have to send any data using a method other than radio, as radio waves don't propogate very well under water. No doubt a probe will be sent eventually (I believe there is one being planned), but it's technically a lot harder than sending probes to Mars.

Re:Search for life in Europa instead

[assaultriflesforfree]

It might be easier to look for life on Europa than Mars, actually. I got to have lunch with Freeman Dyson a few months ago, and we talked about some of the work (which I hope I'm not misrepresenting) he's done with the JPL on the life on Europa problem. As I understood him, a big problem is the cost of sending something way out there that can land, drill down, and send back some useful data. His team eventually decided that, 1) Water's way below the surface; that's where the life's going to be, and 2) It's going to have to collect light on the surface, and even there, sunlight's a little scarce. They envisioned these sort of gigantic solar collectors, almost like satellite dishes, protruding up through the surface where they could collect light. A neat feature is that anything that collects light also reflects it when observed properly, a la a rabbit in headlights. His idea was to just send a little probe and have it lined up so that the Sun, the probe, and Europa are all in colinear positions. If, as it comes into position, some glaring is obsreved on the surface, it might mean there's a good chance of life. Anybody know more about this? Am I completely off in what I've said?

A close-up of Mars doesn't seem like it will provide the same insight, unfortunately.

Nice close-up for wallpaper

[Chuck Bucket]

If you want a great Mars pic from last night for your wallpaper (suitable for 1024x or 1280x) today, get it here:

wget http://hubblesite.org/db/2003/22/images/a/formats/ full_jpg.jpg

It's pretty slow loading, but wget will get it for ya.

CB

dammit

[jwjcmw]

I like this caption better.

Re:post processing?

[HarveyBirdman]

Many amateur astronomers now use CCD or other digital cameras to captured dozens (if not hundreds) of images in sequence, and use "image stacking" programs to combine many images into one.

There are some very good examples online if you search. The image stacking seems to reduce the effect of atmospheric turbulence. The effects of the air are always changing and so they tend to average out whereas your target (Mars in this case) will remain constant.

Here is a site that explains image stacking.

I think they even do this with Hubble imagery.

Another finishing trick is to snap some dark frames and subtract that out of the final image to remove effects of the image sensor itself.

Exploitable mineral content

[Yanray]

Exploitable mineral content

I want to find some Rare Earth Elements and excessive mineral/gem deposits. Showing pictures of a 300-carat diamond sitting on the surface of Mars will get us their a lot faster then looking for trace amounts of water.

Yes I understand that it is necessary to sustain life on Mars but your average investor/citizen of such an endeavor couldn't give a rats ass.

Re:See The Blue Atmosphere?

[Jedi Holocron]

Opps...

I actually should have sent you to The Color of Mars bit on this site.

Thanks.

Keck observatory & optical interferometry

[TheOrquithVagrant]

I'd love to see how the images the Keck observatory, with its adaptive optics and 10-meter mirrors, and how they would stack up against the hubble images.

Better yet, the images they could produce if the Keck optical interferometer was fully operational. I know taking pictures of things inside our solar system definitely is not what they're aiming for with the interferometer, but it would still be very interesting to see if a ground based "virtual 85-meter mirror" could produce better results than an orbital telescope like hubble.

And STILL better - a space-based optical interferometry array! Imagine images of planets in OTHER solar systems with resolutions similar to the Mars pictures we're marveling at today... Interferometry is cool. I just hope I live to see a really big optical interferometer in orbit, and the images it will be able to snap.

Better stop now, starting to ramble... :)

Why so excited?

[baz00f]

I'm sorry, but if you look at the numbers here you'll see that past perihelic oppositions of Mars to earth are just about as close as this one. Year 2003= 34.6 million miles. Year 1956 = 35.1 mill. = difference of 1.4%. Year 1971 = 34.9 mill. = diff. 0.9%. Year 1988= 36.5 mill = diff. 5.5%

I doubt that such a marginally closer opposition distance significantly improves observations of anything.