Posts Tagged mars
Planetary Dawn
Image Credit & Copyright: Luis Argerich, luisargerich.com
A quick post for your Wednesday…
This month, four of the five naked-eye planets gather along the eastern horizon near dawn. The celestial grouping is seen here just before sunrise on May 5, from a beach near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Starting near the top of the frame, the brightest beacon is Venus. Mercury is below and right of Venus and brilliant Jupiter is lower still, near image center. Below Jupiter, Mars is relatively faint and struggles the most to shine through a thin cloud bank and the warming twilight glow. Watch, and as the month progresses the tantalizing configuration will change, with Mars and Jupiter moving higher while Venus and Mercury wander through the sky closer to the rising sun.
Mars Mission
Assembling Mars Mission, 1970, by Klaus Burgle
The retro-future is very dynamic, and this photo is no exception. Just look at all that bustling activity!
Photo from Retro-Futurismus, via x-ray delta one @ Flickr.
Distant Worlds
Posted by Danielle in Art & Architecture, Books & Literature on September 9, 2010
I know, I know, I have a thing for Soviet retro-futurist art… but you have to admit, these Soviet illustrations are nothing short of stunning! (Info and images via Dark Roasted Blend.)
Karl Gilzin’s book ["Travel to Distant Worlds"] (from 1958) contained some pretty neat illustrations … [b]ut the illustrations got even better once this book was translated into Russian, and some nameless artist from DetGiz Publishing House in 1960 drew these inspiring scenes…
I couldn’t decide what planet I liked best, so here’s Saturn:
And here’s Mars:
Bull’s-eye
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
An unusual impact structure on Mars, as seen by HiRISE:
What caused the central pit within this impact crater: unusual subsurface layering or a lucky second impact?
Impacts into layers of alternately strong and weak material – for example, ice rich versus non-ice-rich – produce terracing such as that seen between the inner pit and the outer rim. Scientists have used terraced craters to estimate the thickness of lava flows on the Moon and elsewhere. Uneven sublimation and periglacial erosion of exposed ice-rich material in the interior of the crater may explain why the small central pit is slightly offset from center relative to the terrace and rim of the larger crater.
The pit in the center of the main feature could also be from a later impact crater striking inside and slightly off-center from the original. It has a raised rim, which is characteristic of impact craters and is difficult to explain with a layered target. While no ejecta from this later impact can be seen, the ejecta could have been removed by extensive periglacial modification. Additionally, the floor fill around the inner crater resembles impact ejects elsewhere at this latitude, and some of the “landslides” to the East could be flow-back of ejecta off the walls of the larger crater.
Written by: Sarah Milkovich
(Via Sky and Telescope.)
Weird Streaks
Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA
What are these weird streaks on Mars? Anyone’s guess. They’re neat-looking, at any rate!
What creates these picturesque dark streaks on Mars? No one knows for sure. A leading hypothesis is that streaks like these are caused by fine grained sand sliding down the banks of troughs and craters. Pictured above, dark sand appears to have flowed hundreds of meters down the slopes of Acheron Fossae. The sand appears to flow like a liquid around boulders, and, for some reason, lightens significantly over time. This sand flow process is one of several which can rapidly change the surface of Mars, with other processes including dust devils, dust storms, and the freezing and melting of areas of ice. The above image was taken by the HiRise camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which has been orbiting Mars since 2006. Acheron Fossae is a 700 kilometer long trough in the Diacria quadrangle of Mars.
Texture
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
This amazing image is not tree bark — it’s Mars. Click here for image downloading options. (It’s quite large.)
Martian landforms have been shaped by winds, water, lava flow, seasonal icing and other forces over millennia. This view shows color variations in bright layered deposits on a plateau near Juventae Chasma in the Valles Marineris region of Mars. A brown mantle covers portions of the bright deposits. Researchers have found that these bright layered deposits contain opaline silica and iron sulfates.
Noctis Labyrinthus
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
I found this incredible image via National Geographic’s Top Ten Space Pictures: Best of 2009. For sure, this belongs in the list!
CRISM observations of this region of the Noctis Labyrinthus formation have shown indications of iron-bearing sulfates and phyllosilicate (clay) minerals.
HiRISE observations have revealed exposed layers which are possibly the sources of the signatures seen by CRISM. In the subimage, the layering can be seen in the lower part of the image. To the upper left one can see a dune field which covers other beds.
Frosted Mars
This fantastic image of Mars was newly released by HiRISE and featured on Discovery News:
In this example, dunes within a Mars crater are detailed (to a resolution of 50 cm/pixel). The image was taken when the southern hemisphere was in the depths of winter in November 2006. The ripples in the dunes are caused by winds shaping the lose dust and sand. The bright areas are either water or carbon dioxide ice frosting the east-facing slopes of the dunes (in the shade from the sun). The darker areas are where sunlight has heated the surface, melting the ice.
If you want it bigger, go here, and down on the right-hand side, pick a wallpaper size to download. (The site, for having so much info, isn’t that intuitive and any link that reads like “This is a larger version of the image you’re looking at” seldom is, I’ve found. What I want is a larger version of the image seen on that page, and that isn’t an easy thing to find.)
Space artwork, part 7
Posted by Danielle in Art & Architecture on October 24, 2008
B. E. Johnson renders wonderfully detailed images of spacecraft (fictional and non-fictional). There’s a lot more to see on his website, check it out!
I’ve been interested in astronomy and space since I was a kid, marvelling at the art I saw in books and magazines about space, spaceflight and space exploration. I read everything I could get my hands on.
Perhaps one day I would go.
Now I do. Little did I know that I would become a space artist myself and inspire new generations to explore space. It turns out I am what I have termed a “method painter”, putting myself in the moment; in the place that I am painting in order to more richly convey the essence of what it’s like to be in space. Not only how it looks but how it feels.
Astro-philatelics, part 32
Posted by Danielle in Currency & Postage on September 24, 2008
The Republic of Upper Volta released these stamps in 1976, commemorating the Viking missions to Mars. (Better images here.)
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About Silver Rockets
This blog celebrates space exploration, human spaceflight and the heavens, through lots and lots ofimages.
My name is Danielle Signor, and I am a space cadet. STS-133 NASA Tweetup Attendee!
This is a blog, NOT A SHOP. Click the images for their source or purchase link, if available.
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