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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... :)
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/
Sorry, no. And WTF does an anti-AGW statement have to do with a dust-devil on Mars?
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf
and
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11650
But even if solar forcing in the past was more important than this estimate suggests, as some scientists think, there is no correlation between solar activity and the strong warming during the past 40 years. Claims that this is the case have not stood up to scrutiny (pdf document).
Direct measurements of solar output since 1978 show a steady rise and fall over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but no upwards or downward trend .
Similarly, there is no trend in direct measurements of the Sun's ultraviolet output and in cosmic rays. So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically even though there has been no corresponding rise in any kind of solar activity.
Because it ain't easy bein' green!
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It has happened and they are good for the rovers believe it or not. The normal winds kick up dust that inhibits the collection of solar light, but these dust devils actually help in removing it. One of the reasons they've been able to go so long on Mars has been for the devils themselves--this is just the first time they've been captured on film.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
It's Saturday night. The editors realize that the average Slashdotter will be having, well, coordination difficulties. And the kind editors want us to see the pics, so they're giving everybody a nice, big target.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Um, spend a little time at this gallery or this one or this one or this one for gigabytes of very sharp, gorgeous imagery - some of it in extremely high resolution.
Saddle up: Riding with Robots
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.
FYI, this is NOT the first time. Spirit caught them before.