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New Dust Storm on Mars Viewable with Telescopes
starexplorer writes "Space.com is reporting that a large dust storm has just began on Mars, just as the Red Planet has gotten in prime viewing location this weekend with a decent sized backyard telescope. An amazing stroke of luck for everyone this weekend! Three PDF Viewing Guides, movies and more available to help get you started."
I've got a Meade 125-ETX, I wonder how visible this will be. The last time Mars was close and I lugged the scope out It was mostly a brown smudge.
Mars will be 43,137,071 miles from Earth at around 11:25 p.m. ET Saturday.
That's 13,803,862,720 rods for the anti-science crowd.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
While this is exciting for amateur astronomers to see a process like this happening on Mars, it's also very forboding and ominous. Mars has a bad habit of becoming engulfed in planet wide dust storms which almost totally hide the surface features of the planet.
s dust.htm
I am sure many amateurs like myself would prefer NO dust storms on Mars while it is so close to the Earth, and so favorably positioned for Northern hemisphere observers. This has been a great Mars apparition so far, I've watched it growing in the eyepiece since August. If the dust stays clear, Mars will be large enough to enjoy until almost February. If it turns into a cloudy red ball, well...
This page shows a dust storm growing from the 2003 apparition of Mars, and a picture of the dreaded featureless red ball.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/09jul_mar
Dust storms are obviously complex events with particles going in all sort of directions...clearly indicate the existance of an intelligent dust storm causer.
An amazing stroke of luck for everyone this weekend!
Not if you live on Mars.
Its just a herd of RIAA lawyers migrating
ap article is the best non-subscription one i could find
VISIBLE!!!
I'll never read Slashdot again.
That's weird - we had the same in London today?! Kinda like caramel, all down the Thames.
Mars always was great from the Earth, with the unica difference that this time will be seen 69 million kilometers of the Earth
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Well, there's always venus. If you could stabilise the atmosphere and get some water there, it'd be pretty much earth-tropical. The trouble is that whole water thing. It'd take regular convoys to keep a colony going. With established strong buildings, we could survive the whole wind-and-earth mars thing, if there's water.
See, water's a wonderful thing. It doesn't just keep us alive, either. A large body of water remains about temperature neutral, so it acts as a heat sink in the day and a heat source at night. Put a big ocean on Venus and we could live there. Same with Mars, which'd be about as cold as a Moscow Winter.
Now find a way to do it.
Who wants to go explore and live on a planet where there are regular "continent-sized" dust storms?
Not I.
Face it: humans evolved in the specific circumstances of the surface of the Earth, and until we can create a practical high-energy source that allows for heavily-shielded spaceships/habitats, it will be extremely expensive to keep humans alive & healthy anywhere else.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
------- In the end there are no begining
I'm far more concerned about the Mars Rovers being able to weather the storm, and come out without their solar panels dust-covered.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Not quite. The atmosphere on Venus is many times denser than that on Earth. Until we knocked a lot of the gas out of the atmosphere, we'd have to live in pressure suits or stay high in the air. Also, the atmosphere is full of sulphuric compounds which would have to be neutralised. Venus already has a lot of water, however, all the surface water has been vapourised -- the planet suffers from a run away greenhouse effect.
Be relentless!
It's all Bush's fault!!
It's not bad enough that he has to screw up one planet's climate, now he's messing with Mars! If only he had signed that Kyoto treaty...
Those martians really are an introverted crowd, throwing up a big dust storm to prevent all of us perverted peeping humans from getting a look at their wives' nighties through their windows!
The differences are somewhat subtle, but the parent is correct. They're not interchangeable, not that proper English matters on Slashdot.
waiting for "language is constantly evolving and changing so stop trying to act like the way it is now or has been is the way it should always be" trolls to come out from the walls
How is Mars having a dust storm? What is causing it? I thought energy can't be produced?
.
The storm can be clearly seen in the equatorial region.
then where is the green?
It usually smells like a goat cooking bacon...
How are we supposed to see The Rock then?
HA HA, Ass....
"Don't Forget to Salt the Fries"
Being dyslexic, I read the last sentence of the summary as "Three PDF Viewing Guides, movies and more available to help get you arrested." And I thought, "great! now even viewing Mars through a telescope has been copyrighted/patented!"
Werent those from Voyager 1?
the longer you stare at it the longer your mind starts reading things into what you're seeing and the next thing you know you're looking at martian canals.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Mars is techtonically dead so earthquakes don't happen. Also, a "couple hundred knots" of wind isn't as impressive on Mars as it is on Earth. Winds on earth that qualify as hurricane speeds on earth, would feel more like a light breeze on Mars due to the low air pressure.
Also, if we want create a colony on another celestial body besides the moon, Mars would be the best choice. Venus is way too hot and has major acid rain. Moons are a bad idea because prolonged exposure to low G environments can cause health problems. Mars, even if it has high winds, is the most similar to earth. It would also be easier to colonize with our current level of technology then venus would.
Speaking is NOT communication
Is this caused by Global Warming???
(Actually Clay Sherrod, who seems to be the first to have imaged this storm, isn't an amateur but he's active in the ALPO Mars section which consists mainly of amateurs and he images at a small observatory, not some huge government funded observatory with various gigantic telescopes.)
The thing is, the big expensive government funded telescopes, or the Hubble, for example, can take better photos of Mars than amateurs can. But there is the question of coverage . . . the big expensive telescopes just don't have the resources (ie, observing time) to image Mars (or any other particular object or planet) several times a night whenever that object is visible.
But amateurs do have the observing time available and they do the work . . . result is, amateurs do a lot of the meat & potatoes of keeping an eye on things like Mars or Jupiter.
More of Sherrod's photos of the beginning of the Mars dust storm and numerous photos of this Mars apparition.
Since Sherrod is imaging Mars pretty much every possible night, he was on the spot to catch this as it happened . . .
Also, if you haven't been following trends in astro-imaging, you may be amazed at the quality of images people are now getting using relatively modest telescopes (generally 8 to 14 inch scopes, the sort of thing you can buy basically off the shelf for maybe $800 to $5000) coupled with inexpensive webcams.
See numerous amateur astronomer's images of this apparition of Mars here. (warning--LOTS of images on that page).
... are down there suffering in that storm, and all we can do is talk about how cool it is.
George Bush doesn't care about green people. With tentacles. And big bug eyes. Mind control devices. Heat rays, anti-gravity belts, uranium PU-32 space modulators...
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
If I remember correctly, there used to be plate tectonics in Mars, but it cooled off and now all the volcanoes and such are inactive. Weird volcanoes? Well, Olympus Mons is friggin' huge, but deader than john paul II. There are huge storms without a doubt (just look out yer window!), but given that we'd have to build buildings with an internal overpressure (1 atm inside, much less outside), I'm sure they'd be capable of dealing with a 'massive storm'.
If we can see a dust storm on mars, surely we'd be able to see the lunar rovers on the moon which is a hell of alot closer, right?
I wonder how this storm my affect the twin rovers on mars ?
Has anyone heard about this issue ?
They said the chances for life on mars were a million to one...
Atmospheric pressure on mars is ~ 1% of Earth pressure (just googled that). That's a lot of giant dust storm with not much gasses to move it around, eh wot? The dust must be ultra fine and very light for this to happen.
This assumes the dust storm travels over any one of them.
Maybe another power boast? Or would there be any scientific value of observing one huge storm through the cameras of the rovers?
http://saveie6.com/
This is ridiculous. The ever increasing power of these storms is a clear example of the bushitler administration's refusal to sign the kyoto protocol. At this rate, how are we going to reach the trended goal of a 0.00108 C temperature drop by 2050?
How do these dust storms form? I though most wind here is caused by the oceans heating up and cooling down less than solid ground...
Google search: 13803862720 rods in furlongs
345 096 568 furlongs
It's "has begun", not "has began". Duh!
... But it is overcast here you insensitive clod!
Actually it really is. It was clear last night until about 2 am. Maybe it is the chaos theory on a universal scale:
"If there is anything remotely interesting in space happening this night, would it be overcast where I am?" I say yes.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
It's full of... dust?
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Venus has very little water, around 20 ppm according to one site I checked, and to get that you would have to extract it from sulfuric acid. Venus is thought to have lost almost all of its primordial water to photo dissociation, with the hydrogen then escaping to space. The evidence for this is a greatly elevated deuterium to hydrogen ratio compared to Earth.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Thanks for the enlightenment :)
Be relentless!
Is it just me or is Mars not so red as previously assumed? The images in TFA are more drab than orange. And NO, I'm not suggesting that plants grow on Mars.
No wonder my allergies are bothering me, and I thought it was a seasonal cold.
Professional Stranger
but the word supposed to be begun? began is past tense if i am correct and yeah i've probaby got mistakes too :D
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
I don't understand why this was modded flamebait. The humor is obvious. He frickin paraphrased "Rocket Man" for God's sake.
Mods with no sense of humor or anti-science Catholics who were offended that he criticised his grade-school nuns?