I was going to update the previous entry, but what the heck: Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society blog just posted more images of the MRO with more explanations too. Funny, one crater she decided to highlight is one I saw as well, but had already grabbed the one I displayed in the last entry, and didn’t feel like doing another. I figured what the heck, let people just go scroll through the images (I’m lazier than Emily; she posted several images on her site). But man, you need a good connection. The images really are incredibly big.
Hmph. The first astronomical camera I used had 384×512 pixels (about 1/5 of a megapixel), if I remember correctly, and that was one of the biggest ones you could get. The detector used by MRO’s camera HIRISE is actually 14 separate chips, 2048×128 across, and then it takes a series of images on a swath as the satellite orbits the planet (like running a paintbrush down a wall; the narrow brush makes a long path). That’s how it makes such enormous images, and the nice optics of the telescope gives it such phenomenal resolution. Pretty cool stuff.
April 8th, 2006 at 2:01 am
I sense a Huffington Post blog entry about all this in the near future. . . .
Hey! Maybe I’m psychic! (-;
April 8th, 2006 at 6:16 am
These picture blogs don’t get much response, I guess that’s a good example of a picture speaking a thousand words! This stuff is just down right awesome!
April 8th, 2006 at 6:50 am
Hoagland’s at it again, and this time he’s discovered Edgar Rice Burrough’s “Lost Cities of Barsoom” in the new pix, buried in the ground and exposed by wind/erosion. Talk about sucking the life out of a beautiful photo! But the better resolution this time around forces him into even more mind- and pixel-bending conclusions.
Anyway, I must say these pictures are exactly the type worth blowing up and covering a wall with. I can’t wait to see Olympus Mons and other well-known sites.
April 8th, 2006 at 7:15 am
Hey I’m from around there and I seem to be lost in this strange world. Does he have directions? I’m sure my mom is looking for me by now.
April 8th, 2006 at 7:45 am
This has nothing to do with MRO but it’s very interesting.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/04/06/rings.of.uranus.ap/index.html
Who would have thought you could find more rings around Uranus? And color? Now for the important question, Why are these particles caught in certain “rings” around a planet? Bigger particles in the inner rings and smaller particles in the outer rings. Apparently the moons take up all the bigger particles leaving only the smaller ones. So why don’t the moons form in the inner rings wich still have the larger particles?
April 8th, 2006 at 9:49 am
So why don’t the moons form in the inner rings wich still have the larger particles?
My first guess would be that the inner rings are within the planet’s Roche limit. Uranus’s gravity would then keep the ring matter from condensing into a moon.
The other cool thing is that the color of the ring correlates with the size of the particles. Knowing only this, I’d say that the ring color is due to the Tyndall effect (just to drop the name). The fact that the rings made of smaller particles are blue and the ones with larger particles are red suggests that this is the right explanation. . . or else, that the astronomers figured out the size of the ring particles by looking at the color. All I’ve read is the CNN piece, so I can’t tell for sure!
April 8th, 2006 at 10:56 am
So that means the composition of the particles don’t affect the color, only the size?
April 8th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Hoagland’s full of it. These images that have been released are no where *near* Helium and Hastor.
April 8th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Well that was interesting, Kevin and ericnh thanks for the forwarning!!! I mean I knew the guy was nuts but what was that? I’m pretty sure I saw Edgar Rice Burroughs himself in one of those craters.
April 8th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Hoagland is on a “Rocketship to Nowhere” as the old 1940′s-1950′s song says…or perhaps it is on it’s way…
right down to the “Funny Farm” where life is beautiful all the time!:)
Seriously, I wonder if there are more nutty people like this or is it just that with the Internet we are more aware of them?
April 8th, 2006 at 11:30 am
Being that those are rings around uranus and they are red and blue, there must be some correlation with politics.
April 8th, 2006 at 11:32 am
Disclaimer: This is a long way out of my field, so I’m basically throwing out a guess until Professor BA comes back. I think it’s an informed guess, but take it with caution.
The inner rings we knew about before are made of material “of neutral color”. The possible materials are various ices (water, methane, ammonia), rock, and perhaps organic matter of the kind found in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Color-wise, this is all pretty bland stuff. If you have a big lump of it, its appearance will range from white to off-white, dingy gray and eventually black, depending on the mix.
The fun part happens when you don’t have a big dirty snowball, but instead a tiny speck of dust. Light tends to scatter well from objects which are on the same scale as the light’s wavelength. This is why cigarette smoke sometimes appears blue, for example: the gunk in the air comes in particles about the same size as the wavelength of blue light. (Contrary to what some websites say, this isn’t the reason why the sky is blue. It does explain why a dusty sunset is redder, and why clouds are white in a blue sky.) A cloud of dust grains each about 700 nanometers across will scatter red light, while a cloud whose grains are half the size will scatter blue.
What I think is happening here is the scattering of light wavelengths by small particles of material which is intrinsically “bland”. That is, a bulk lump of it will not be colored, while a dust cloud will. Whether the ring material is bright or dark — say, icy or rocky — would I suppose affect the overall brightness, but the peak of the ring’s color spectrum will be determined by particle size.
Not all material seen in planetary astronomy is intrinsically colorless, of course. To pick a random example, Titan tholin is brown. And there’s a decent chance that reddish rings appear that color because they contain iron compounds.
April 8th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Thanks Blake, it sounds pretty good I guess prof BA will correct anything wrong there
April 8th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Way cool pic’s! and even the full sized ones downloaded reasonably fast considering I’m in the Atlanta convention center using free wireless – I can recall connecting via 300 baud dial up and waiting in anticipation as the latest images from the Viking Landers painted them selves pixel by pixel during the DeltaVee days
HoHoHoagland sure didn’t waste any time, the man is delusional at best, but he’ll be on coast to coast am for months now
April 8th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
I don’t want to detract from Hoagland’s serious crazy, but there are some srious right angles there at http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/e10004/e1000462a.jpg — I could be talked into dropping a rover there.
April 9th, 2006 at 5:44 am
Assuming that image is not manipulated; that is really weird.
I can only think that it’s a slab of harder rock underneath wind-blown sand, but to have a square shape? Hmm..
April 9th, 2006 at 8:03 am
The loonies at GLP have taken Hoagland’s fantasies and run with them.
April 9th, 2006 at 8:34 am
BMURRAY : I really wonder how geological processes can form right angles like this. I can see how someone could get all excited about the possibility of intelligent construction involved. Now all we need is Harrison Ford returning to the MArtian Temple of Doom,,,
Gary 7
April 9th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
There are plenty of geological processes that generate linear features (e.g. faults, volcanic intrusions, tension cracks). If you look at enough of them that happen to intersect at random angles, some will be close to 90 degrees.
Geological processes can even form near-perfect interlocking hexagons, like a beehive. Click the link from my initials to see an example from Devil’s Postpile, California.
Complex structures, even geometrically regular ones, need not have been designed (as I’m sure all of us around here are aware).
April 9th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
Mud drying up and cracking usually forms peculiar looking cracks. Ice maybe too?
What about applying Occam’s Razor where the easiest explaination is usually the correct one?
April 10th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
The other element of the pseudo-science that these guys are getting rich from, is the conspiracy groups that are needed, to explain why the “truth” is never given out normally. Only these honorable souls have the courage to tell us how it really is. Oh, and by the way, buy the books, CDs and T shirts so they can continue with the brave causes..and maybe get another RV or sports car.
(If you read this backwards there may be a code that explains the pyramids)
Thanks for a little light in the darkness.
April 12th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
poop on all of you. poo poo
April 12th, 2006 at 1:01 pm