Slashdot Mirror
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
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
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...
.
The storm can be clearly seen in the equatorial region.
Earth is closer to the Sun than Mars is, but there's still a lot of energy reaching Mars' surface.
I speak England very best
It's not about going to Mars because its a pretty fun place to visit like Disneyland. It's about going to Mars because of a desire to learn about new environments and new science and new technology.
We are like 15th century Europe about to start exploring the Americas, it's a huge wild dangerous place filled with great unknowns and fantastically huge potential. Should we stay home in our safe little castles or step out into the next frontier and learn how to live there and what its pitfalls and rewards are?
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
No. Due to the lower gravity and atmospheric density on Mars, it is very easy for even light winds to whip the dust into what look like impressive storms. However, something reasonably solid such as a rover can (in theory, wouldn't recommend it due to the dust abrasion etc) plough straight through the middle of whirlwinds etc. with no issues of being flung around.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
(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).
I wonder how this storm my affect the twin rovers on mars ?
Has anyone heard about this issue ?