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Crowdsourcing Mars Images
alancronin writes "In conjunction with BBC's recent astronomy television program Stargazing Live comes a citizen science project to analyze images of Mars. Zooniverse has set up a site that allows people to explore the surface of Mars in incredible detail with pictures taken from the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRISE can image Mars with resolutions of 0.3 m/pixel (about 1 foot), resolving objects below a meter across."
TFA doesn't really talk about some of the stuff which was discussed on the show last night: they repeatedly saw these markings in areas of Mars and thought that weather patterns were involved. They've asked people to classify them on a load of images, and they've noted that the pattern of marking appearance follows the local seasons: they begin to appear in the martian spring, peak during summer, slow during autumn and disappear under ice during winter. This reinforces their theory that it's to do with defrosting and sublimating CO2 ice under solar heat. There were a few quick comments in the show about getting some of the data published.
There's also an Interesting Feature marker which people can use to indicate odd things. One thing they've picked out is strange colouration in some of the markings.
I think I can see a license plate in one of the pictures. It's a martian rover. Where's the link to report it so it gets blurred out? :D
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
They are taken in a studio anyway. Just have people come on a tour, like at Universal.
I can't believe how people still believe this stuff. And btw, Lance is innocent.
Free Mars!
And also Marvin the Paranoid Android for some reason.
I am officially gone from
They did another crowd-source event last year. The hunt was on for all the viewers to help find exo-planets - they succeeded.
No you can't "explore" the surface. They present a fixed image and you have to classify features. You can't move, zoom in/out, choose a specific location, or even see where on the surface you are or what the current scale is. You may as well be trying to identify scraps of crumpled paper, there's just no real sense of "Marsiness" about it.
was done several years ago and we were looking for honeycomb shaped patterns on the surface. It was at:
http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/about-honeycomb
but that sites dead now...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
We need more content about video games, movies and the cult of celebrity. Science is boring and tedious. We want entertainment.
I found a face!
Or you can use JMars: http://jmars.mars.asu.edu/
Accounts are free to make, the software is free and open source, and it has access to bunches of both published maps and raw data products streamed over the web. The mars group at Arizona State University uses it to do instrument targeting, general GIS-type work, and show off how cool their lab is.
Isn't this just asking for a slew of "discoveries" similar to previous Mars finds: Bigfoot, pyramids, and giant glass worms?
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show