How much Mars can you take?
One of my favorite cameras in the whole solar system, HiRISE on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, has been snapping away for a long time, taking superduper hires images of the Martian surface. The folks at HiRISE just released thousands of images of the Red Planet for your perusal… and face it, if you have time to kill reading my blog, you have time to kill looking at awesome Mars pictures.
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Some are gorgeous, some are odd, and some are pure head-scratching "Whaaa?", like the one I show here of defrosting patterns near the Martian south pole. Mars is weird.
But you can find that out for yourself. Go and explore another planet!
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:52 am
For those who can’t get enough of Mars, check out the Tucson Weekly (weekly free ‘alternative’ newspaper/website), who have occasional photos online of various Martian terrain, etc.
Latest set (Sept. 2) can be found at: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2009/09/02/mars-gullies-and-dunes
(RSS feed is their ‘currents’)
J/P=?
BTW, since Tucson is the home of the University of Arizona, who also handled the Phoenix mission, there’s a lot of people here who love to see Mars news.
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:19 am
Heh heh. That pic you posted shows the “trees” that live on the Martian polar ice. Even Arthur C. Clarke thought the first images of them might be the smoking gun proving life on the red planet.
As you said, though, Mars is weird. As Hirise shows, the “trees” are just cracks in the ice with bedrock and dust showing through.
Still…can you imagine how freaking cool it would be to get an image from a rover on the ground right there?
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:21 am
BTW, I prefer to say I am euthanizing time whilst reading your blog. PC and all…
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:26 am
Very nice. Have they been incorporated in Google Mars yet?
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:41 am
I read it as “Mars Overlord”.
But I’m not **too** disappointed…
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:42 am
So presumably that’s not water ice like our own Poles, then?
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:01 am
It’s hard to get a sense of scale looking at those, since there’s nothing familiar as a frame of reference. If I’m doing the math right, on my 96 DPI monitor, one inch=24 meters/79 feet for the 25cm/pixel photos and 48 meters/157 feet for the 50cm/pixel photos. So those little craters pockmarking, say, the Bedrock with Curviliniar Features picture, are 100-150 feet in diameter, right? (Sorry, I can’t think in metric).
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
Nah, Mars is pretty normal, it’s Earth that’s weird (i.e. unusual).
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:14 am
@ Toasterhead:
You’re off by a factor of ten, aren’t you? The hirise site gives the scale of this image as about half a meter per pixel, so the wee little dots are about 2-3 meters across, aren’t they?
And if I remember correctly, they aren’t craters, but patches of bedrock showing through the ice and frost.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:38 am
Is if Mars has “ice caps” doesn’t that mean it has water? Or are the ice caps made of something else?
Why all the controversy about whether there is/was water on mars if we know it has ice caps? Doesn’t that kind of settle the debate?
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:42 am
@ Matt:
The bulk of the ice on the polar caps is carbon dioxide (”dry” ice).
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:48 am
9. Matt Says:
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:38 am
Is if Mars has “ice caps” doesn’t that mean it has water? Or are the ice caps made of something else?
______________
We’ve known for a long time that Mars has water ice and water vapor, and lots of it. There’s enough water in the south ice cap to cover the planet in 11 meters of water if it all melted.
The controversy is whether there was ever liquid water on Mars. There has been some evidence found by the rovers and orbiters of the possibilty of liquid water having existed on Mars at one time, but it hasn’t been conclusive.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:48 am
I, for one, welcome the Martian overload.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:09 am
And look how straight the trail of green slime from the giant worm is!
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:09 am
When I look at those pictures I get the shivers just knowing that right at this moment there are conspiracy theorists examining those pictures for evidence of a government cover-up.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:45 am
@ Marianna:
It’s even better! The scientists who first studied this area gave the name “Aztec City” to it, because the angular mesas looked sort of like an aerial view of old ruins. Errrr….that is, they absent-mindedly gave away their secret discovery of a Mars-Aztec connection. PROVE IT ISN’T SO!!!!!
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 am
Great, just great. That means that Mars is also doomed in 2012.
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:28 am
“How much Mars can you take? ”
On a good day…maybe twenty bars…oh, we’re not talking about the candy?
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Kuhnigget, this is the “Tree” image that Clarke commented on:
http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/m08046/m0804688a.jpg
Have to say, it does Look like a tree!
#17, FC,
When man goes to Mars, will he build bars on Mars, and will he call them Mars Bars?
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:11 pm
#11 Toasterhead – the evidence of liquid water at the surface of Mars in the ancient past is overwhelming. Science magazine gave it the discovery of the year award several years back.
What’s still unclear is how enduring and extensive the liquid water was in the ancient past, whether features that have changed in recent times are due to liquid water eruptions from underground, and possibly whether liquid water is periodically stable and present in the martian arctic during high-obliquity.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Paradelia strikes!
To me, that image looks like a herd of wildebeast in the Kalahari during dry season.
Too much Nova, I guess.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:32 pm
If you flip it over, it looks like Rorschach from Watchmen, perhaps left by a contrite Dr. Manhattan?
http://www.scientificblogging.com/rugbyologist/blog/watchmen_pareidolia
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Oh Noes! Has the “Slashdot effect” (or the “Digg effect”, if you are so inclined) expanded to include Bad Astronomy?
The HiRISE site is no longer loading for me. Does this mean that Bad Astronomy’s reader base is so large it can kill a server? Or does it indicate REALLY poor traffic management by the HiRISE folks?
edit: I’m getting the site to load now. I wonder if the size of the high resolution photos are contributing to the “Server too busy” message. Methinks someone needs to upgrade their servers’ capabilities.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Let’s get a HiRISE capability out to all the planets and the most interesting moons in our solar system. How cool would that be?
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
@kuhnigget
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Don’t tell Phil but it’s probably the link from CNN that’s, uh, euthanizing our server. BTW, the cropped image probably isn’t at the same resolution as the full image, it’s usually zoomed out.
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:00 pm
funny.. the picture above looks like the great lakes in north america
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Mars: << 1 atm pressure, planetwide circulation (dust storms), precipitation (snow), liquids (brines).
Earth/Titan: ~ 1 atm pressure, planetwide circulation (zonal winds), precipitation (rain _and_ fog), liquids (water/methane).
Seems to me Mars is the odd man out.
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:25 pm
@ Cheyenne:
Yes, and that would likely prompt both 24/7 reception systems and a planetary system wide internet. I’m all for it.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Argh….. how am I supposed to get any actual work done when you post stuff like this.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Does mars have poison ivy? The photo sure looks a lot like my thigh does in the third week of my affliction. I love mars. I read every trip to mars book I come across in the library.
September 5th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Ken @ 14:
That’s not a worm trail. It’s a Martian cylinder contrail!
QUICK! EVERYONE TO THE UNDERGROUND CITY! START DIGGING!
November 18th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
So how is it that we can get a hi rise photo of a absolute ant here on Earth but everything on Mars is a true false question. Come on people do we have to hide the fact that Mars is not the desert they say it is. When is NASA going to omit they are hiding the truth about what is really on Mars.