I make no bones about the fact that I love the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. With its 50 centimeter (18 inch) resolution, it’s returned one astonishing picture after another. I’ve picked several for my annual Top Ten Astronomy Pictures, too.
And now NASA has announced something incredibly cool: they are allowing the public to choose locations for HiRISE to image! It’s easy enough. Just go to their website, register, and then you can look at other suggested spots or suggest one yourself.
I suggested one myself: re-imaging a black pit on Mars that I featured in my Top Ten pictures of 2007:
This is a rimless pit, basically a cavern on Mars. I suggested they image it again at a different time of day, yielding three-dimensional information about it. The change in the Sun angle will allow scientists to see how steeply it’s sloped, where the rocks sit, and also possibly illuminate a different part of the pit walls. It would be very interesting to see if any of the rocks have changed as well, maybe settling downslope since the prior image was taken.
I hope they pick mine, but go there and pick your own. You can search the extensive (11,000+ images and counting) HiRISE archive for interesting things, or poke around the web. And yes, the Face has already been suggested though for some reason the person suggesting it didn’t mention the Face, and just said it was an erosional feature of interest. I think that’s pretty funny. Actually, lots of suggestion have been submitted for that region in Cydonia, unsurprisingly!
But there’s a lot of surface to map on Mars, so give it a shot. And if they do wind up picking yours, let me know! That’ll be worth a followup post.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:40 am
They’re just going to get thousands of requests for “The Face.”
January 21st, 2010 at 7:42 am
What do I want to see on the moon? Something like this:
http://rlv.zcache.com/apollo_11_moon_landing_boot_print-p228740111322291534trma_400.jpg
which I doubt I ever will.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:49 am
Mangala Valles – there was a landslide there I actually got to study at uni once in a geomorphology course!
Its also a potential first landing site.
Also the ice cap / martian regolith boundary with a series of different images over the seasons showing how the martian ice cover changes and what effects it has on the terrain and those landing sites / probes and rovers active sites to spot the human touch on Mars.
- StevoR a.k.a. Plutonium being from Pluto
PS. Thinking of your top 10 pictures lists, a request if I may please BA – in your last 2009 top 10 pics you suggested you may do another one soon with more images and some that came later in 2009 after you’d posted too (eg. glint on Titan, Betelgeux imaged, moon rise from Rhea, a southern cross one, WISE’s first light etc .. ) Is there any chance we could have another top ten BA blog pics of 2009 please?
January 21st, 2010 at 7:55 am
Is there any plan at this time to have the HiRise photos added to the Google Mars section of Google Earth?
January 21st, 2010 at 7:59 am
Well, there goes the rest of my day…
January 21st, 2010 at 8:20 am
I’m a caver. I definitely want some astronaut/geologist/caver to rappel to the bottom of the Martian pit and figure out how the pit was formed. And get back out, of course.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:23 am
Evidence of John Carter’s visits there.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:23 am
Is that pit on flat ground? I’m no cavologist, but it looks like a sink hole, implying an underground river or some such that caused the collapse.
That’d certainly be something to look further into.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:29 am
Off topic sorry, but I’d really love to see an answer to these question I asked late in the recent-ish Ouranos (Uranus) thread :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/01/18/ooo-ran-us/
***
30. StevoR Says:
January 18th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
As for the sideways position of Ouranos being due to ejecting a large moon, it is an interesting theory but it raises the following 3 questions for me :
1. You’d expect to see a bit more disruption of the Ouranousean satellite and ring systems wouldn’t you?
2. Is there any observational evidence for this idea or is it just hypothetical?
3. Also is it necessary to explain this or is it superflous? Don’t planetary axial tilts naturally vary unless they are stabilised by large moons such as is the case for Earth?
***
Would anyone care to answer these or comment please?
PS. My apologies if this breeches netiquette in any way but I’d really love to find out some answers here. I’m guessing that maybe people just didn’t see this comment before & am not just trying to pester folks, well not too much anyhow.
PPS. Thanks for posting ‘astropixie’s’ blog link with that BA – I’ve added her to my faves list and commented on the Ouranos post there incl. a link back to the BA blogs article. Again, I think I’m doing the right thing netiquette wise. My apologies if I’m not &, please, let me know if I *have* done the wrong thing so I can avoid repeating any mistakes.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:51 am
I wish more of these pictures would include some sort of scale. I have no idea what I’m looking at half the time.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:54 am
What do I want to see on Mars?
My own two feet covered in the martian dust or striding out over martian ice that’s what!
January 21st, 2010 at 8:55 am
“I’m a caver. I definitely want some astronaut/geologist/caver to rappel to the bottom of the Martian pit and figure out how the pit was formed.”
Sandworms.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:56 am
What about the Great Stone Ass of Mars?
And where are the Buggalos?
January 21st, 2010 at 8:56 am
I like to think there is cannabis on Mars.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:57 am
@ Art : If there isn’t – yet – I’m sure we can take some along.
January 21st, 2010 at 9:17 am
When I saw the title all I could think of was, “My name written in letters large enough to be seen through an earth-bound telescope.”
January 21st, 2010 at 9:29 am
Phil, I’m pretty sure there was a very detailed (and accurate) simulation of the Caverns of Mars done back in the 80′s. I remember running it countless times myself as a youngster.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwGSVzqLCg4
January 21st, 2010 at 9:32 am
Phil, I’ve just sent you another email. I would appreciate if you could get back to me about the topic of it. Other than email and these blog comment spaces, I have no idea of any other way to contact you. Indeed, that’s what I’m trying to solve.
January 21st, 2010 at 9:57 am
Looks like a goo place for a Green Mars living hole
January 21st, 2010 at 9:59 am
That black pit is obviously the lair of Shai-Hulud
January 21st, 2010 at 10:00 am
The face has already been done, for reference:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003234_2210
January 21st, 2010 at 10:07 am
@LtStorm (#8):
“…it looks like a sink hole, implying an underground river or some such that caused the collapse.”
You’re close. It was an underground river of lava, most likely, flowing down the flanks of a volcano, forming a crust on top and continuing to flow below until it drained. The opening is probably a skylight where the ceiling later collapsed. Got ‘em here and on the Moon, as well (the latter having been imaged by Kaguya/SELENE for the first time last summer).
Great place for a Martian colony: Well-protected from radiation, meteorites, and dust storms.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:11 am
@Phil:
Where did you get the very pretty version you posted in this blog entry (and in 2007)? The link takes me to the HiRISE site, but I can never find your close-up, contrast-enhanced version that shows the rocks in the bottom so clearly.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:13 am
goatse!
January 21st, 2010 at 10:20 am
This looks just like one of the hundreds of a water main sink holes Los Angeles has been experiencing this year: asphalt top layer with ruble underneath. I’d say about 2 feet across. Are you sure of the provenance of this photo?
January 21st, 2010 at 10:31 am
I don’t think that the pit goes more than, probably, 2 crater diameters in depth. Taking the same picture and increasing the brightness lets you see a little bit into the pit.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Qu-XNZYE6aQ/S1iO6gjV3HI/AAAAAAAAFtI/ncUyZp8HGNM/s1600-h/2104943998_5ced96dee6_o-1.jpg
What I find amusing about this picture of the pit with increased brightness is that it looks like there’s a small dust cloud to the left. Maybe sand and rocks sliding as it has been seen before? Or maybe just an artifact due to the CCD being underexposed in that region? So yeah, I also want to take a look into the pit with another sun angle.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:39 am
I calculate about 58,000 pictures would cover the entire surface of Mars with this camera (2520 Megapixels). Check my math.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:47 am
Dejah Thoris.
J/P=?
January 21st, 2010 at 10:55 am
Oh, lordy,I second the incomparable Dejah Thoris
Where’s Helium again?
January 21st, 2010 at 11:14 am
Anywhere in the Valles Marineris would be cool with me
January 21st, 2010 at 2:13 pm
#12: Sandworms would be bad. Fortunately, Mars is not Arrakis, and the Barsoomians don’t exist either, though I read several books in both series.
#22: Lava tubes are more like it, of course.
I still see the need for skilled cavers/astronauts to explore and map that pit and the possible lava tube(s) that could be connected to it. They would be good places to build shelter for humans to live, with decent shielding from meteorites and radiation.
January 21st, 2010 at 4:17 pm
I would like to know the diameter of the crater as well. It’s hard to get perspective on some of these photos. Even so, they ARE amazing! Thanks for sharing … as always.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:15 pm
What do I want to see on Mars? Besides me? A Police Box.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:51 pm
^ A TARDIS sure but maybe we can do without the threat of the zombie-fying waters of Mars then?
I’d suggest Valles Marineris and the peaks of the Tharsis Bulge volvanoes and Elysium plataeux volcanoes too. The Martian icecaps and ancient shoreline of Vastitas Borealis would be great too or the moutains ringing the Argyre and Hellas basins but then there are so many amazing spots there.
Thinks fondly back to the Mars trilogy of Kim Stanley Robinson, ‘Mars’ & ‘Return to Mars’ by Ben Bova, ‘Moving Mars’ by Greg Bear and so many more great SF books set on various versions of the red planet from Malachandra to Barsoom..
January 21st, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Oops. That’s Malacandra not Malachandra. From the CS Lewis book Out of the Silent Planet if you are curious. That one was well-written and interesting but with a rather anti-science and anti-exploration philosophy which I disagreed with. Good read though.
See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Silent_Planet for more.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Does the HiRISE camera always point straight down at the surface?
If it’s in any way orientable, then I’d suggest we also take some
pictures of that hole at an angle. We’d lose some resolution (because,
for instance, at 45 degrees the hole would be 1.41 times further away)
but we might get to see interesting new features inside it.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:11 am
@LTStorm: A sinkhole was my first thought too.
That HiRISE camera is amazing! It would be interesting to see how deep that cavern extends.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:01 am
I’d like to see BACTERIA!!!
January 22nd, 2010 at 2:52 am
I want to see it photograph that face without the shadows and that super volcano too! B-)
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:57 am
“What do YOU want to see on Mars?”
Robots. Lots and lots of robots. Yes sir. A couple on top of the biggest mountain in the solar system and even more down in the trenches. Let’s get us some exploration and discovery going peeps.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:42 am
I would say Olympus Mons in very high resolution.
January 22nd, 2010 at 2:24 pm
I say Olympus Mons and Vally marnes as for Cydona based on the Mars global Surveyer photos it case closed nothing there looks like it was made by someone every thing look like naturel formations to me . how about Marss moons if we can
January 22nd, 2010 at 4:59 pm
How about a close-up of Marvin?
January 22nd, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Quick, someone call Richard C. Hoagland for his opinion of what to image on Mars. I have little doubt that he would choose Cydonia. For a little background, here’s why he thinks Cydonia is so important (from Wikipedia):
“Hoagland claims “the Face on Mars” is part of a city built on Cydonia Planitia consisting of very large pyramids and mounds arranged in a geometric pattern, with the ratios between measured angles roughly equaling mathematical constants such as pi, e, and the square root of 2. He states that the ratio between the surface area of a sphere and the surface area of the tetrahedron inscribed within it, 2.720699 (pi x square root of 3 / 2), is an approximation of e that Hoagland refers to as e’. Since e’/pi (square root of 3 / 2) is ~0.866, Hoagland speculates that the primary meaning of the geometry of Cydonia is to emphasize the ratio of the sphere and circumscribed tetrahedron.”
Mr. Hoagland will simply not give up on his hypothesis about the Cydonia region and it’s geometrical oddities. Maybe if NASA re-images this region Hoagland will finally accept that there is nothing artificial there and stop bugging NASA.
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:19 pm
I’d love a high-res picture of Ooranos.
January 23rd, 2010 at 5:27 am
Great place to hide from Imperial Cruisers…or is it?
January 30th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
[...] week you can see new images of dunes on Mars, read about the whereabouts of MER Opportunity, the NASA announcement that the public can choose locations for the HiRISE camera to image, planet killers, get the latest updates on the Allen Telescope Array, and much [...]
September 10th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
I want to see the sub-surface of Mars: how thick the crust is, composition of the core, temperature of the core, radioactivity of the core, metamorphism and geology beneath the heavy Olympus Mons, and more details about the hydrated minerals found in Valles Marineris.
Out of the Silent Planet isn’t anti-science it’s anti-ego. The antagonist is clearly portrayed as a megalomaniac and a psychopath. A character little different from Bova’s “New Morality” movement.