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... 2011! More at:http://marsparticipate. jpl. nasa. gov/msl/participate/sendyourname/
Posted by Slacker Astronomy
Posts in the past four weeks
Thursday
Mar 11 2010
08:46 UTC
Mar 11 2010
08:46 UTC
Tuesday
Mar 09 2010
17:47 UTC
Mar 09 2010
17:47 UTC
Possibility of Past Water on Mars Takes a Hit
Images of Mars taken from orbit show a massive system of riverbeds and canyons etched by water. Or maybe not. A new study of one channel shows that it was formed by lava flow and not water, and the results make "a strong case that fluid lava can produce channels that look
Posted by Universe Today
Tuesday
Mar 09 2010
02:53 UTC
Mar 09 2010
02:53 UTC
Could Peepoo Bags´ Help Fertilize Martian Soil?
(Image Credit: Peepoople. com)Unlike our beloved Earth, Martian soil is very hostile to terrestrial plants. While this may not hinder our efforts to visit the red planet, it will prevent us from raising crop and planting forests upon this barren dusty world. Fortunately there seems to be an innovative invention that may resolve this issue–although it
Posted by Colony Worlds
Saturday
Mar 06 2010
05:39 UTC
Mar 06 2010
05:39 UTC
Gorilla On Mars?
Classify this one under the same nonsense as the "Bigfoot on Mars" the wooden plank or Mars, or perhaps even the "Face on Mars." Just an optical illusions, folks from a very, very zoomed in image from the Mars rovers. The Sun newspaper seemingly started this foolishness on what must have been a
Posted by Universe Today
Saturday
Mar 06 2010
04:23 UTC
Mar 06 2010
04:23 UTC
Could Phobos Be Hollow?
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, there was some speculation that Mars moon Phobos could possibly be hollow due to the its unusual orbital characteristics. While scientists now agree that the moon is very likely not hollow, vast caverns may exist within the moon, and it might be a porous body instead of solid.
Posted by Universe Today
Friday
Mar 05 2010
14:27 UTC
Mar 05 2010
14:27 UTC
100,000,000,000,000 bits of Mars Data
Pitted Layers Northeast of Hellas Region. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona100 terabits = 100,000,000,000,000 bits. It´s not difficult to comprehend that figure today, but few decades ago this amount of data volume is just unimaginable, the time when we were still using diskettes (floppy disks) of few hundreds KB. And this incredible amount of information is what the
Posted by My Dark Sky
Friday
Mar 05 2010
01:35 UTC
Mar 05 2010
01:35 UTC
LX Trials & Tribulations
Its the end of another long cold session with my Celestron C6-SGT and everything is packed away. Ice is melting off the screen of my laptop as I type and drink a nice mug of hot chocolate. Its been a very nice clear night and finally, at last, I have been able to try out
Posted by Jims Orion XT10 Astronomy Blog
Thursday
Mar 04 2010
22:39 UTC
Mar 04 2010
22:39 UTC
Sand dunes march across Mars
I've said this before, but it bears repeating: when I was a kid, Mars was a dead planet. Dry, frozen, with hardly any atmosphere, I always figured it wasn't very interesting. Heh.Mars may or may not be alive in the biological sense, but it's certainly active geologically! And images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera
Posted by Bad Astronomy
Thursday
Mar 04 2010
12:09 UTC
Mar 04 2010
12:09 UTC
While we are waiting for images of Phobos
Here's an image from the Mars VMC webcam. Nice. There may not be too many images of Phobos, as the orbiter went behind Phobos so it was all dark anyway. Check the Phobos weblog here.
Posted by Astroblog
Wednesday
Mar 03 2010
22:46 UTC
Mar 03 2010
22:46 UTC
Mars images processed - see the Polar Ice Cap
Here are the processed images of Mars from my imaging session last night using an SPC900NC webcam and 2x Barlow, with my C6-SGT XLT telescope. These were approx. 10 x 30 second duration AVI sequences which I aligned and stacked using K3CCDTools, and including some histogram and unsharp mask enhancement to bring out the details. I only
Posted by Jims Orion XT10 Astronomy Blog
Wednesday
Mar 03 2010
22:42 UTC
Mar 03 2010
22:42 UTC
Spirit Hunkered Down for Winter; Stuck Forever ? Maybe Not !
The plucky Mars rover Spirit´ may yet rove again !She´ll just have to outwit and outlast the unavoidably harsh cold and desperately low power levels of the looming winter in Mars southern hemisphere. Rather long odds to be sure – but she´s done it before. Remember – at this moment
Posted by Universe Today
Wednesday
Mar 03 2010
00:22 UTC
Mar 03 2010
00:22 UTC
Imaging Mars
Just a quick diary post tonight. More practice at setting up and polar alignment of my EQ5 Synscan Goto, and C6 SCT, to try and get some webcam images of Mars. I've managed to get some footage at prime focus and 2xBarlow recorded into K3CCDTools. Too late to be processing tonight, so pics will have
Posted by Jims Orion XT10 Astronomy Blog
Tuesday
Mar 02 2010
22:27 UTC
Mar 02 2010
22:27 UTC
MRO Radar Maps Extensive Subsurface Martian Ice
Sure, its big news the Moon has water ice on the north pole, but Mars is loaded! A new extensive radar mapping of the middle-latitude region of northern Mars shows that thick masses of buried ice are quite common beneath the surface. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Shallow Radar instrument has detected
Posted by Universe Today
Tuesday
Mar 02 2010
21:15 UTC
Mar 02 2010
21:15 UTC
Phobos ahoy!
Over the next few weeks, the European probe Mars Express will be making a series of close passes to the Martian moon Phobos, a wrecked potato that has had an extensively battered history. In January, ME got this shot (among others):You can see that this little moon has been kicked around quite a bit. Those
Posted by Bad Astronomy
Tuesday
Mar 02 2010
20:07 UTC
Mar 02 2010
20:07 UTC
Phobos Flyby Wednesday night/Thursday morning
The ESA's Mars Express has been doing a series of flybys of Mars's tiny Moon Phobos. This will cumulate on Wednesday March 3 20:55 UT (Thursday morning 7:55 AEDST, 7:25 ACDST, 5:55 AWDST in Australia) with the probes closest approach of 67 Km from the 22 Km wide moonlet. You can keep up to date on the flyby at the Phobos flyby blog. Not only will this close pass give us stunning images of Phobos, but will return valuable data about its mass, composition and paves the way for other missions to Ph
Posted by Astroblog
Tuesday
Mar 02 2010
19:00 UTC
Mar 02 2010
19:00 UTC
Follow Closest Flyby of Phobos in Real Time
Mars Express will skim over the surface of Mars´ largest moon on Wednesday, making the closest flyby of Phobos by any spacecraft. Passing at just 67 km above the surface, precise radio tracking will allow researchers to virtually peer inside the mysterious moon. You can follow the flyby in "real time," — allowing
Posted by Universe Today
Tuesday
Mar 02 2010
07:50 UTC
Mar 02 2010
07:50 UTC
Phoenix Still Silent as Martian Ice Recedes
As expected, NASA´s February 2010 listening campaign for the Phoenix Mars Lander has failed to detect any signals emanating from the long silent vehicle. NASA´s attempts to reestablish contact with Phoenix were restarted in January 2010 and timed to coincide with the onset of springtime and disappearance of ice at her location in the
Posted by Universe Today
Friday
Feb 26 2010
19:54 UTC
Feb 26 2010
19:54 UTC
This blob is Mars
This blob is Mars. It's a blob because we are having lovely warm weather here in Adelaide (no point in clicking to embiggen, it doesn't get any better). You would think that warm weather would be ideal for astronomy, as you don't have to dress up in multiple layers like the Michelin Man or run the risk of losing favourite extremities to frost bite. On the other hand, the warm air and ground means atmospheric turbulence, and to an astronomer, the atmosphere is the enemy. Warm air rises from the war
Posted by Astroblog
Thursday
Feb 25 2010
16:06 UTC
Feb 25 2010
16:06 UTC
Stunning New Looks at the Mars Avalanche
Remember the amazing image of an avalanche on Mars back in 2008, captured by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter? Bernhard Braun from UnmannedSpaceflight. com has now created several different 3-D views of the event, providing never-seen-before, ground-level observations by using special software he developed that can create three dimensional images
Posted by Universe Today
Wednesday
Feb 24 2010
07:38 UTC
Feb 24 2010
07:38 UTC
Winter Sky Show: Gemini, Mars and the Moon
Gemini is one of the finest constellations you can see during the winter months, easy to spot because it traverses the highest spot in the sky (the zenith) and features two bright stars, the twins Castor and Pollux. These two stars are well known because they symbolize the heads of the mythical twins. The stars that make up the rest of the bodies of the twins are less bright and require slightly darker conditions than we will have this week, but I provide an image nonetheless so you can see the
Posted by The Urban Astronomer
Monday
Feb 22 2010
15:04 UTC
Feb 22 2010
15:04 UTC
Unpeeling the history of water on Mars
Years ago, I visited the Grand Canyon with my family. The beauty of it was overwhelming, and everything they say about it is true. It's magnificent. That grandeur is only amplified by the obvious scientific significance of it. The layers of sedimentary rock, exposed by the eons-long patient erosion of the Colorado river, are a
Posted by Bad Astronomy
Sunday
Feb 21 2010
13:41 UTC
Feb 21 2010
13:41 UTC
A Night of Achievements
Good nights for astronomy are often few and far between in the UK. We've had the usual run of miserable, rainy, cloudy nights. Sometimes when the early evening sky looks promising, inevitably the clouds roll in by the time we've had our supper!So when a good, clear, cold night comes along you grab the opportunity,
Posted by Jims Orion XT10 Astronomy Blog
Saturday
Feb 20 2010
22:17 UTC
Feb 20 2010
22:17 UTC
Ozone on Mars: Two Windows Better Than One
Understanding the present-day Martian climate gives us insights into its past climate, which in turn provides a science-based context for answering questions about the possibility of life on ancient Mars. Our understanding of Mars' climate today is neatly packaged as climate models, which in turn provide powerful consistency checks – and sources of inspiration – for
Posted by Universe Today
Friday
Feb 19 2010
20:14 UTC
Feb 19 2010
20:14 UTC
Opposition of Vesta from Mars
Left Panel, asteroid Vesta as seen from Mars on the 11th of February (for Earth reference see here), Right Panel, Vesta as seen from Mars at the time of Opposition on Mars on & May 2010. Image visualized in Stellarium, location approximately latitude of Adelaide on Mars (as always, click to embiggen). In my series of posts about seeing things from other worlds, (opposition of Mars from Mars and Venus), I'm having a look at the opposition of the asteroid Vesta. (My photographs and sketches her
Posted by Astroblog
Tuesday
Feb 16 2010
22:07 UTC
Feb 16 2010
22:07 UTC
Mars Express: Vorbeiflüge an Phobos
Heute begann für die europäische Raumsonde Mars Express eine Serie von Vorbeiflügen am Marsmond Phobos, die am 3. März ihren Höhepunkt erreichen werden, wenn die Sonde die Oberfläche des Mondes in nur 50 km Höhe überfliegen und damit einen neuen Rekord für die größte Annäherung an Phobos aufstellen wird. Die Fotos und Daten von Mars Express
Posted by Solscape
Tuesday
Feb 16 2010
17:51 UTC
Feb 16 2010
17:51 UTC
Phoenix Phone Home! Teams Still Attempting Contact with Mars Lander
No word yet from the Phoenix Mars Lander and, really, mission managers don't expect to hear from the lander. But that doesn't mean they aren't trying. Teams are currently attempting to make contact, with another — and final — series of attempts may occur next month. We haven´t heard a peep since late
Posted by Universe Today
Monday
Feb 15 2010
09:13 UTC
Feb 15 2010
09:13 UTC
Martian Settlers May Need Chickens To Conquer The Red Planet
If humanity ever intends upon on settling Mars (by settling I mean a one way trip with no plans on returning back to Earth), they are going to need a whole lot of chickens if they want to survive–let alone thrive–upon the red planet. Aside from providing an excellent source of protein, chickens could help future
Posted by Universe Today
Sunday
Feb 14 2010
19:30 UTC
Feb 14 2010
19:30 UTC
Mercury and Earth From Mars
When we talked about seeing the Earth - Mars Opposition from Venus, you might have wondered what Earth would have looked like as seen from Mars on the night of the opposition, January 30th. Well as Earth has to be directly between Mars and the Sun for there to be an opposition, you wouldn't have seen much at all (if you wanted to keep functioning eyes that is). You would have had to wait until February to see the Earth, and on the 15th of February if you were on Mars you would have seen Earth and
Posted by Astroblog
Friday
Feb 12 2010
03:15 UTC
Feb 12 2010
03:15 UTC
Multi-Layer Mars Parfait Provides Environmental Record
Is Mars more like a Peanut Buster Parfait, a granola-yogurt parfait, –or perhaps — maybe a seven-layer salad? Near the center of a Martian crater about the size of Connecticut, hundreds of exposed rock layers form a mound as tall as the Rockies and reveal a record of major environmental changes on Mars billions of
Posted by Universe Today
Friday
Feb 12 2010
00:37 UTC
Feb 12 2010
00:37 UTC
Alte und junge Einschlagkrater in der Region Sirenum Fossae
Sirenum Fossae ist ein mehr als zweieinhalb Tausend Kilometer langes System von Brüchen in der Marskruste, das im Südwesten der Vulkanregion Tharsis liegt. In diesem Gebiet befinden sich die größten Vulkane auf dem Mars, so auch der 24 Kilometer hohe Olympus Mons. Durch die mehr als vier Kilometer hohe Aufwölbung von Tharsis kam es zu
Posted by Solscape
Thursday
Feb 11 2010
19:30 UTC
Feb 11 2010
19:30 UTC
The Opposition of Mars from Other Planets
By now you have learnt that when a planet is in opposition with Earth, Earth lies directly between it and the Sun. Now what if we were standing on a planet inside the orbit of Earth, would we see Earth and Mars bright and close together?The answer is a qualified yes, if the planet itself is nearly in a straight line betwen the Sun, Earth and Mars. When Mars and the Earth were aligned, Venus was pretty much in a straight line with them and the Sun as well. Unfortunately, Venus was on the other sid
Posted by Astroblog