Welcome Mama Joules to the astroblogger community – stop by Carnival of Space #139 hosted by her!

~ A l i c e !

Check out Carnival #138 over at Nancy Atkinson’s new blog!

Well, Spirit is now a station at Troy rather than a rover somewhere south of Mars’ equator. Time to have some fun, while the drivers try to back her into the perfect parked position to get Sun on those solar panels!

Spirit Embedded at Troy

I know there’s lots of you artists out there itching to do some science illustration. We don’t have cameras that can show us what it looks like for Spirit to be stuck. Odd, isn’t it? There are what 6? 7? cameras onboard Spirit, and yet, that’s just the problem, they are all ON BOARD Spirit. We can see bits of her, but not the her whole body.

So, draw, photoshop, paint, contstruct a picture of Sprit at her new home and send it on over here.

Skill Level

This competition is for kids and adults. Entries will be divided by me into “professionalish artists” and “doodling around and having fun artists.” There will be winners in both categories. For instance, if you’re really good at photoshop, but you just do it on your own time you’ll probably get put in the “professionalish” category. If you’re 3 and just learning to hold a pencil (hopefully your parents will help you label your drawing so everyone knows what’s what) you’ll be in the “doodling around” category.

Rules

Submit digitally in a web-ready format to my e-mail address alices astro info at gmail dot com (all one word, make that at an @ etc). File should be high enough quality to print. If you’d like to submit on paper e-mail me and I’ll give you an address.

I’m making the choices. I’ll be fair.

Deadline: February 13 - Let’s put them up on Valentine’s day and show Spirit’s rover team that we love them!

Prizes?

Everyone

1. A copy of your picture will be displayed on the Space Place Bulletin Board at Pacific Science Center, celebrating the beginning of Spirit’s new life as a station.
2. (Until i run out) – Lenticular postcards from NASA (oooh! pretty)

Featured Winners

(You are all winners, just for participating) but there will be one chosen from each category

1. Let me see if I can rustle up some passes to see the Martian Adventures Planetarium Show. I’ll post more details on that here later.
2. A copy of your picture will be displayed on this blog.
3. Got a suggestion that would be meaningful to you and wouldn’t cost me much? I’m listening!

Liability

If you are under 18, please sign your piece with your first name only, and have your parents send me a message saying it is okay for me to post your picture and your first name.

~ A l i c e !

Spirit Embedded at Troy Credit: Keith Enevoldsen

Well, the “Free Spirit” campaign is over, she’s staying at Troy. Doug McCuiston, the director of the Mars Exploration Program says “We do not believe that Spirit is extractable.” He maintains that they might free her by accident, but the goal now is to position the solar panels to make it through the Martian winter, so she can wake up in spring and begin some amazing cool new stationary science.

SIMULATED (but none-the-less-awesome) Image from Stuart Atkinson http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/a-very-big-day-for-spirit/

Positioning for Winter

Most important now, is making sure Spirit has enough power to keep her instruments warm. Currently her solar panels are tilted slightly away from the Sun. The team is trying to back Spirit a little ways up the hill behind her, which would point the panels towards the Sun. They have already succeeded in moving her backwards about 20 cm, so hopes are high that she’ll get to the best possible position.

A note on “backwards” – Spirit normally drives backwards, and when she got stuck she was driving backwards in the southerly direction. As they move her now, they are still moving her backwards and south – attempting to back her up the hill.

Emily quotes John Callas (project manager, Mars Exploration Rovers) who says they “estimate 3 weeks of driving activity, handful of drives left. Around March-April will be last images before winter hibernation.”

Upcoming Science

Just because she’s stationary does not mean Spirit is done. The team has plenty of science planned for her including:

• “Fully characterizing” (studying in depth) the soil around her. The soil is full of sulfate salts which geologists think formed in fumaroles (steam vents).
• Watching the long-term and seasonal changes in a specific location on Mars.
• Working on determining if Mars has a solid or liquid core (I missed the “how” of this, but it may have something to do with the last experiment they mentioned:
• If Spirit sends out a continuous radio signal, we can monitor that signal closely which will allow us to get a very detailed map of Mars’s orbit, rotation, and precession (wobble in the axis of rotation). We can’t do this with a rover, only with a lander.

Send a Postcard to Spirit

JPL has set up a website where you can “send” a postcard to Spirit, and see what others are sending her. Check it out! Here’s mine:

Want More?

Now a Stationary Research Platform, NASA’s Mars Rover Spirit Starts a New Chapter in Red Planet Scientific Studies – NASA Press Release.

What Season is it on Mars? – Emily’s wonderful calendar, and a program to determine the time anywhere on Mars.

~ A l i c e !

Thank you Emily Lakdawalla!

I’m always trying to figure out what season it is on Mars, and she’s got it all calculated out. Check out her detailed and easy to reference Mars calendar.

A Sneak Peek

That data is entirely from Emily.

Look for the next post on Freeing Spirit.

~ A l i c e !

Opening today!

To go along with Pacific Science Center’s Facing Mars exhibit and Roving Mars IMAX film, we’ve created a new planetarium show.

Come hear stories about the adventures of NASA’s Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. Make your own decisions regarding some of the challenges they’ve faced and learn to find Mars in tonight’s sky. View photos of the Martian surface that are less than a week old, and root for the rovers to keep on roving! Ticket required (FREE tickets for Pacific Science Center members!) 40 minutes – ages 4 and up. Children under 4 are not admitted.

Go to pacificsciencecenter.org for plenty more information about the exhibit and both shows.

RSVP to our Facebook event, and show your support!

When is it Showing?

~ A l i c e !

Oh the beauty that can result in faraway places untouched by human interference:

Dunes from a crater in Noachis Terra, west of the giant Hellas impact basin. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

I’m getting so excited about Facing Mars coming up at Pacific Science Center. Just a little over one week to go! So, to keep myself entertained, I’ve been looking at some new Mars stuff.

The 10-Second Summary (What you need to know)

• First, click to make that picture bigger. You’ll be amazed at the detail. The boulders are in between the dunes.
• Second, dunes are common on Mars, being a planet covered in dust and sand.
• Third, Mars Orbiter (home of the HiRISE instrument) was not functioning for a while there, but it started working again – and this picture is one of the new ones (from late December 2009). HiRISE is a camera that takes some of the most detailed and breathtaking images we’ve ever seen. It can see the rovers’ tracks from orbit – it is that good.

About Dunes

There are a few basic types of dunes, and they all depend on the angle and changeability of the angle of the wind, the surrounding landscape (are there trees? mountains? bushes?), and the size of the particles that make up the dune.

Longitudinal Dunes

Longitudinal dunes tend to form parallel to the primary wind direction. The picture above from HiRISE is a perfect example of longitudinal dunes.

Star Dunes

Star Dunes - Issaouane Erg, Algeria from NASA

Star dunes occur in areas with widely shifting wind directions.

Parabolic Dunes

Parabolic Sand Dunes - thanks to Newborough Warren

Parabolic dunes occur in an area where the wind direction is constant, and their open side faces into the wind.

Crescent (Barchan) Dunes

Crescent (Barchan) Dunes - NASA/Malin Space Science Systems

Crescent or barchan dunes occur in an area where the wind direction is constant, and their open side faces away from the wind. They are very easy to confuse with parabolic dunes.

Transverse Dunes

Transverse Dunes - Astronaut Photography of Earth

Transverse Dunes are very similar to Longitudinal Dunes – except that they form perpendicular to the wind, not parallel. You’ve seen “dunes” like this – the waves in the sand are created by the water in the same way the wind creates these larger transverse dunes.

Want More?

The Mars Orbiter HiRISE Press Release (more detailed info on the above picture itself)

Dunes

~ A l i c e !

Ahh! I found the original post – it had slid back to 2009! Here it is …

By now my first podcast for 365 Days of Astronomy should be live, and here is the post to support it – containing links and images I mention in the podcast. So go listen already!

Also, please excuse the terrible run-on sentences and immense number of “now”’s in the transcript. I tried to write exactly what I said, and the way I speak is significantly messier than the way I write. And I always thought I wrote the way I spoke. Hmm.

Pictures!

Analemma (actually a tutulemma) from NASA

Links!

Pacific Science Center

U.S. Naval Observatory

Dark Days of Winter

Sun and Moon Data for One Day

Vocabulary Words!

Blerch. I used a lot of jargon in that podcast, but if you weren’t taking notes and remembered that there was a word somewhere in there that you wanted more info about, here are some of the main ideas.

Equation of Time

Analemma

Perihelion

Astronomical Noon

Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Capricorn

Mean Solar Time

Apparent Solar Time

Meridian

Eccentricity

Today is also the first day of winter quarter, wish my students and me luck on our three-month journey.

~ A l i c e !

The ‘Cast

As you may or may not have figured out, one of my other interests is baking, as well as eating yummy food.

What better for the holidays than a post all about cooking in space? Turns out, although most astronauts rehydrate and reheat the packages of food, one astronaut at least experimented with combining those foods and ways of cooking in space. Check out Nancy’s story about Astronaut Sandy Magnus and her adventures in preparing holiday food – over at Universe Today.

You can also look into Sandy’s journal about cooking in space, or stop by my collection of recipes (none of which were ever prepared in space, sadly).

Happy Newtonmas and Merry Christmas!

~ A l i c e !

Stewart Atkinson of Cumbrian Sky is graciously hosting a holiday Carnival of Space #134. If you don’t go for any other reason, go to see his awesome space-y Christmas tree – it is what I’ve been trying to make mine look like for years. I still haven’t succeeded, though the star on top is a model of a star (our Sun).

Also, thanks to Stu for making sure everyone knows that Alice’s AstroInfo “does what it says on the tin” I think that’s hilarious. I like to think I provide information about Astronomy …

~ A l i c e !