Spotting dozens of Martian dust devils in one observation
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Using Europe’s Mars Express orbiter, scientists have found it is possible to identify multiple active dust devils at a time on the surface of Mars.
The circles on the image to the right shows dozens of such dust devils, at the outlet region of a valley on Mars dubbed Mamers Valles, located at the western end of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country (as shown on the overview map above), because practically every image of this region shows glacial features. This location is where Mamer Valles drains into the northern lowland plains.
Mars Express is uniquely equipped to spot these mini whirlwinds. To form a single image using its High Resolution Stereo Camera – the instrument responsible for these new snapshots – the spacecraft combines sequential views from up to nine separate camera channels (which look at Mars in a different colour, from a different direction, or a mix of the two). If nothing changes on the martian surface while these are being taken, the multiple perspectives align – but if something is moving about, it stands out clearly from its surroundings.
In this new set of images, Mars Express captures not one but dozens of active dust devils.
The image to the right covers about a hundred miles from top to bottom. It is part of a long term project using Mars Express to map the dust devil activity on the entire Martian surface. Not surprisingly, dust devils do not occur everywhere in equal amounts. It appears they favor certain locations, with more generally found in the high latitudes of the cratered southern hemisphere.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The post directly below this one (the one with the error in the title) fails when clicked with the message
”Safari cannot open the page because too many redirects occurred.”
FYI.
mkent: Thank you. I’ve corrected the spelling of Tianwen-2, and have also experienced the same issue. I cannot identify why this post won’t load in its own tab, when all others do. I will ask my web guy.
I removed the comma in the name of the asteroid in the title, and the page now loads properly. Interesting.
The awesome thing about starship is that it makes it cheap enough to get to cisluner space. but doesn’t make it so cheap that going there temporarily makes a lot of sense.
Look at Antarctica. It’s cheap enough to get there that you can do a lot of stuff. In fact, it’s so cheap that you don’t have to actually go there in person for long to do what you want to do there. Since hardly anyone wants to live there, and temporary stays are easy, no one colonizes the place. The same goes for the oceans and many other places
But with Starship it will be cheap enough to colonize the moon but too expensive for any but a small handful of people to just go back and forth. You have a situation more like the Americas than Antarctica. Colonization could happen.
Cloudy: Good comment, but why did you post it in the post about Martian dust devils?
I don’t believe most of the current names will survive first contact:
“Where are you?”
“Deeuteron . . Duteronilus Men . . . Oh [something], I’m at Duter”
“Copy that.”