Bill Nye's Marsdial

Some Clown writes "MSNBC via the Seattle Post Intelligencer is reporting that Bill Nye the Science Guy, as part of the Earthdial Project has got what's being billed as a 'Marsdial' put onto the Mars Rover. Interestingly, it is now the official backup for orienting the Mars Rover in case of primary camera failure. Maybe an old fashioned sundial is just what the doctor ordered after the many math and other blunders of late. This whole Earthdial Project seems pretty interesting as well. They're trying to set up a worldwide network of sundials tracked via webcam. The goal is to track the sun's movements as viewed from many points on earth, as well as from Mars. Definitely interesting... at least if the 'Marsdial' doesn't disintegrate upon landing." There's a little more technical description of the Marsdial in our earlier story.

Comments

Re:Your tax dollars at work, folks.

[Tempelherr]

I think the overall cost of this would be negligible when considered in the scope of things.

Also, it appears as though Bill Nye essentially only modified the design of the color post that they were sending up that was originally meant to better calibrate the color tinting on the cameras. From the article:

"NASA had planned to calibrate using an erect post set in a color chart. The idea was to compare various colors in shadow and direct light to accurately adjust the natural tint.

A post? A shadow?

When Nye saw the color-calibration method planned for the rover, he realized it would just take one small step for mankind to transform the device into a sundial. He could add function without adding weight. Eureka! Nye was ecstatic."

As seen on TechTV

[bigbigbison]

Bill Nye was on TechTV a couple weeks ago talking about this. It was pretty interesting. They have a video of it on the TechTV site. http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/howto/story/0,2 4330,3587881,00.html