[meteorite-list] Impressive Viewer Interactive HDCuriosityCamera.

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2012 00:45:45 -0500
Message-ID: <286D3CA439E247AB8DB944AA011A41A0_at_ATARIENGINE2>

List,

The cameras on MER Spirit did a lot of star images:
http://www.universetoday.com/33613/spirit-rover-begins-making-night-sky-observations/
Exposures were limited to a short period and, of course,
the camera couldn't slew like an equatorial mount, so
it's not deep-sky work and can only take images of the
bright stars.

Spirit also took fine images of the Martian moons;
there are a lot of nice pictures of Deimos and Phobos,
including the frequent eclipses, here:
http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_instrument/projects_2.html
Also, meteors in the Martian atmosphere but no comets!

Although a "local" phenomenon, there are lots of nice
clouds on Mars to watch (and take movies of) as they
drift along:
http://spacetime.forumotion.com/t1037-clouds-on-mars
Many of the best cloud movies are by the Phoenix lander.

And, if you were ON Mars, you could watch the two bright
"stars" of the Earth and its Moon orbit around each other
every thirty days by the naked eye alone. From Mars, the
Earth is an "Evening Star" or "Morning Star" like Venus is
for us on Earth, and just as bright, often the brightest in
the Martian sky, and with that orbital star of its own.

Spirit took a picture of the Earth just after Martian twilight
on sol 63 (2004), the first picture of the Earth from the
surface of another world:
http://gargles.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/Mars_to_Earth.jpg
Although the Earth-Moon system had been photographed
from Martian orbit earlier:
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/earth-from-mars-photography.html

That would be worth going outside to watch, even if it is a
little nippy at night on Mars.

Well, more than a little nippy.


Sterling K. Webb
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Peterson" <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2012 12:28 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Impressive Viewer Interactive
HDCuriosityCamera.


> The night sky on Mars is probably worse on average than on Earth. Our
> atmosphere hardly attenuates the stars at all (less than a magnitude
> at sea level), but Mars often has a lot of dust in the air, which
> definitely blocks them.
>
> Chris
>
> *******************************
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatory
> http://www.cloudbait.com
>
> On 8/17/2012 11:13 AM, John Lutzon wrote:
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the link...Awesome!
>> Being that Curiosity is nuclear powered, I would love to see a night
>> panorama of the amount of stars that would be visible in the dark
>> thin
>> atmosphere.
>>
>> John
>
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Received on Sat 18 Aug 2012 01:45:45 AM PDT