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Phoenix Lander Photographs Martian Whirlwinds
Toren Altair recommends a story up on the Space Fellowship site that begins "NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has photographed several dust devils dancing across the arctic plain this week and sensed a dip in air pressure as one passed near the lander. The Surface Stereo Imager ... caught a dust devil in action west of the lander in four frames shot about 50 seconds apart from each other. 'It was a surprise to have a dust devil so visible that it stood [out] with just the normal processing we do,' said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, lead scientist for the stereo camera. 'Once we saw a couple that way, we did some additional processing and found there are dust devils in 12 of the images.'"
Looks a lot like Texas to me... :)
A key factor in the whirlwinds getting stronger is an increase in the difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures.
Shit! now we have to worry about climate change on mars?
So... why's there an tag around everything from "dancing..." to "...images."?
I recognize that place, it is just outside of Phoenix.
I'll never get to go to Mars, but at least I get this. I'm loving the pictures that Phoenix is sending back. I enjoy seeing the differences and the similarities between the two planets. Just awe-inspiring.
http://transformativeworks.org/
speedy gonzalas to me....
several dust devils danced across the arctic plain this week and [NASA's martian lander] sensed a dip in air pressure as one passed near the lander.
-1 redundant. Anyone with any knowledge of meteorology could have told you that the center of hurricanes, tornadoes and of course dust devils have low pressure.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
I wonder what would happen if one of these little devils ran over the lander!?
Because it ain't easy bein' green!
My blog
I, for one, welcome our new dust devil overlords.
I've got an old Fujifilm 5000S digital camera which I'll donate to NASA so we can get some decent colour photos.
I'm sick of this B/W crap.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Dupe dupe dupe of Earl dupe dupe dupe of Earl dupe dupe....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Marsdustdevil2.gif
Willy Wonka: I'm sorry, I was having a flashback.
Mr. Teavee: These flashbacks happen often?
Willy Wonka: Increasingly... today.
There are plenty of color pictures from this mission and other current Mars missions on NASA's site and on the Phoenix team's site and on many amateur sites.
Saddle up: Riding with Robots
Hey, that looks like Taz...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
That's not a dust devil. It's a fast moving Martian.
Yet another government agency coverup!
Rocks and craters. That's all there is everywhere we look. Rocks and craters on Mercury. Rocks and craters on Mars. Rocks and craters on the Moon. Rocks and craters on Venus. Rocks and craters here. Rocks and craters there. Rocks and craters everywhere. Rocks and craters, rocks and craters, rocks and craters.
Okay, so there's ice on some of moons of Jupiter and Saturn. But otherwise, rocks and craters. Makes me wonder sometimes why we have a space program. If only there was a scum covered pond, or an artifact, or *SOMETHING* out there.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
As it turns out, there are places like home.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I won't fall for the bait, since you know that all digital camera sensors (even Foveon X3 with its integrated filtering) are actually monochrome, and it takes extra processing to generate a colour image. :-)
However, it *IS* worth pointing out that Phoenix's panoramic camera sensor resolution is very low compared to the consumer cameras of today (just 1024x1024 each). While this is by design and comes bundled with goodies like stereo imaging, full panning in horizontal and vertical, and 12-position colour wheel, nevertheless the fundamental 1-megapixel restriction exists and does affect images taken. Single shots from Phoenix are never going to rival a $50 compact camera of today in resolution and hence in immediate impact. But of course Phoenix isn't restricted to single shots. :-)
As Mars-Earth communication bandwidths increase, we'll be able to afford higher resolution single frames in the future.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
So far the issues of DRM have mostly been raised by privacy advocates and geeks, with most of the rest simply not caring. DRM, as with copyright in general, is confined to the digital world, and the common attitude is "unless you are a pirate, you shouldn't care, right?".
If Apple does pursue this through the courts, it can change public opinion. A lot of people would think, "Getting sued for fixing up your own shoes? WTF", and perceive the lawsuit as frivolous, or, best of all, finally seeing that the grave shackle effects of DRM spread far beyond the digital world. People will seriously question DRM laws if they realize that they are breaking them day after day with routine, normal, and perfectly acceptable life activities.
My kids are watching cartoons in the next room, and I just loaded the pictures when a loud 'Meep Meep' came from Roadrunner!
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
Beautiful
I think the movies captured by the rovers are much cooler:
Sol 1120
Sol 486
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
If I am not mistaken, they have to take bunches of images in order to capture a single whirlwind. Color images hog more bandwidth and memory. There was some talk of automating the process in the rovers to automatically detect movement and only save and send those frames with activity.
However, another problem is that most probes use filters to capture color, and filters don't work well with moving objects because the target moves between filters. On some of the Phoenix color images you notice a rainbow-like tinge around shadows. This is because the shadows move slightly between the different color filters due to sun movement across the sky. Whirl-winds would be even worse in this regard.
And I don't think they want to send up a typical "human" camera because our color vision is limited compared to what it could be. These are scientific missions, not tourist stops, and so mostly use science-friendly color spreads. (Although its sometimes possible to tease out human-friendly colors via post-processing if one knows the scenery color profile well enough.)
Table-ized A.I.
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=zg70y10m
So now even NASA is into rehashing old news. Dust devils were filmed by the Spirit rover in 2005: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20050819a.html
"I am programmed to answer to the name 'Robbie'."
Humans have never sent anything to Mars, it's a lie. Look at that photo, it's all black and white, everybody knows Mars is red.
I think that you're thinking of the twenty-third century.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
I'm not sure that I'm kidding about that. I've seen quite a few people, including some volunteers of suitable ages, suggest that we send older people to places like Mars with the explicit intent of it being a one-way trip. That being the case, if we're talking about the ever more popular approach of starting by sending robots to dig tunnels to live in and accumulate fuels and oxygen and such, it may turn out that one of the biggest contributions those Mars travelers provide is their bodies. When they die, if they agree to have their bodies ground up and added to the garden area, they'll add not only almost two hundred pounds of prime, high-nutrient biomatter, but also a complete set of the tens of thousands of microorganisms that we carry around with us, many of which we count on to get through the day.
;->
Of course, we could just start shipping them dozens of dead bodies of healthy people on high-g trajectories as soon as we've got the greenhouses up and running but I just can't see that getting approved. Maybe if it's offered as a multi-million dollar burial option, the dead people's estates can be gotten to pay for it
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.