You need to upgrade your Flash Player The theme of this blog is not only and obviously space, but in particular “terrestrial worlds”, places that tend to have surfaces on which one could walk or at least attach oneself to. These places sometimes also have other earth-like familiar features such as atmospheres, weather, volcanos, geysers and perhaps, we are finding, even exotic oceans, rivers or lakes that are not necessarily made of familiar materials we are used to here at home. The second theme is imagery. Occasionally I do some retouching of images when needed if an image is incomplete or sometimes “dirty” or noisy. I will attempt to correct image shortcomings based upon other images or well-accepted presumed attributes. When this is done, notes will be offered as to what was added, why and sometimes how it was done. This way no one should ever wonder if something they are looking at is real or photoshop.

Archive for the 'Mars' Category

Martian Spiral

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

A Martian dust devil… or at this size, a tornado. We have seen these at much smaller scales from the rovers on the ground, but it would be exciting to see one of this size from the ground. This image was returned from the Mars Recon Orbiter from almost directly above and this spiral probably measures about 30km wide for an idea of scale.

Happy Holidays From Mars

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Wallpaper: Frosted Martian Sand Dunes

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

Wallpaper: Frosted Martian Sand Dunes

The most common force for change on Mars is wind. Dust-devils and dust storms are quite common and they result in patterns and textures as seen here. Making this image even more interesting is the frost developing on one side of these dunes as the Martian winter takes hold.

Wallpapers: The Martian Ganges Chasma

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

The Ganges Chasma is a side canyon at one end of the vast Valles Marineris trough system of Mars. This image was returned by ESA’s Mars Express, brought to our attention by Bill Dunford’s Riding with Robots. The image above is a 2560×1800 wallpaper. Download the 1440×900 here.

Phoenix’s Probable Last Surface Image

Monday, November 10th, 2008

One of Phoenix’s Final Images

On the Phoenix Mission’s 152nd Sol (a Martian day) the lander has fallen silent and mission engineers have been unable to communicate with it for over a week. This was expected as the Martian sunlight is less and less as the season changes. The sun is simply not providing enough energy to replenish its solar batteries. There is an outside chance that communications might resume again, but it would be a fleeting opportunity at best.

In all, the mission prooved the existence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface; we saw (with our own eyes) Martian ice melting; it was the first time an atomic force microscope was used outside the bonds of Earth; the discovery that Martian soil may not be that different from the Earth’s and that growing plants in it may not be at all difficult; Phoenix found trace amounts of salt which could be nutrients for life; and finally calcium carbonate which suggests a past existence of liquid water on the surface of an anchient Mars.

And who could forget this image. Not too shabby.

Roving Mars

Friday, October 17th, 2008

Roving Mars IMAX Movie

How do I not see these things? This was from back in 2006. I don’t recall ever hearing of this. It is an IMAX on the two Mars rover missions Spirit and Opportunity. Coincidentally, Paul Newman who passed recently apparently had something to do with it as well. I assume narration.

What We Can Do With Old Mission Photos

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

Viking 2 Approaches Mars in 1976

These above images of Mars were composited by Emily Lakdawalla and display a staggering improvement over what we have seen published over and over again since the Viking missions took place in the mid-70’s (see below). You may be familiar with the bottom image as it is one of the few images of Mars taken in a crescent phase. I never would have guessed that by simply re-compiling the data with today’s everyday image software, it was possible to bring out the real beauty hidden within the data.

Mars from Viking 2 Looking Bad!

Midnight Sun in Color

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Colorized Martian Sun Phases

“That’s my colourized version of the already-classic “Midnight Sun” image created by the Phoenix team, showing the path of the Sun across the sky as seen by the Phoenix lander. Up near the martian north pole Phoenix is in the martian Land of The Midnight Sun, and the Sun never sets, it just dips down towards and then rolls over the southern horizon at midnight before climbing up again…”

Taken from phoenixpics.wordpress.com, a nice Phoenix fan site featuring the best images of the Phoenix mission thus far.

Color of Phoenix

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Phoenix Color Image of the Martian Surface at the Pole

Don’t think we ever posted a true color of the Martian surface from the Phoenix mission yet. This was stitched together by James Canvin. Hopefully the next time we post this view it will be covered with Martian frost. Just in time for Christmas!

Argh

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

“Evidence of Soil Habitability Inconclusive.”

See The Planetary Blog on the results from Phoenix. Results could actually be the opposite of what we are hoping for…

Life Online

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

“Many people — including, I must admit, me — took this sentence to mean that a special briefing had taken place, alerting the White House to some positive news about life on Mars.”

Emily Lakdawalla comments on the Phoenix hub-bub which may have been over-blown.

Life On Mars

Monday, August 4th, 2008

“It would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more “provocative” than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface.”

Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society will host a web stream on this matter Wednesday night.

Phoenix Lander from Mars Orbit

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

phoenix from MRO

See the full story and larger surrounding area image here. Larger image includes the parachute, back shell and heat shield.

More Exposed Martian Ice

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

More Exposed Ice

Read more

What is on Phoenix’s Leg?

Friday, June 27th, 2008

What is on Phoenix’s Leg?

I cannot stop looking at this animation. The first frame was taken on the 8th sol (a Mars day) and the second around the 31st sol. As you can see from the animation, it seems that some mystery material is either growing, moving or multiplying around one of the legs of the Phoenix lander. The most likely source is frost building up on what would be a very cold surface, however the only issue is that it doesn’t look exactly like frost and it hasn’t appeared on any of the other legs.

Image note: We added an artificial fade from 1 frame to frame 2 and scaled the original image to around 300%. Due to artifacts from increasing the scale and compression we added some noise to smooth out the overall appearance.