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.'"

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[mgabrys_sf]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Marsdustdevil2.gif

Willy Wonka: I'm sorry, I was having a flashback.
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