Tag: lower

A Dusty Martian Opportunity

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Mars is a planet wide desert with underground and polar cap water, but it’s general arid environment and occasional wind give rise to dusty weather events such as tornado-like dust devils and local dust storms.  Every so often, one of these little dust storms expands and becomes a planet wide phenomena, and in early June this is exactly what happened. So what does it mean for our rovers and orbiters? Global dust storms are a recurring phenomenon on Mars, and happen regularly about the planet regardless of season.  Every 3-4 Martian years (6-8 Earth years) one of these smaller storms...

Image Makes the Sun Look ‘Hairy’

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I’ve seen images from the Sun in all different wavelengths of light.  It looks very different across the electromagnetic spectrum, with some wavelengths making up more of the Sun’s total energy output than others.  What’s always striking to me is seeing the images of the Sun that show its structure, including the strange and beautiful features of plasma that dance across it’s surface.  A recent APOD captures just such a concept. This image shows the Sun in Hydrogen Alpha, a wavelength of light at 656 nanometres.  This is from the ionization of Hydrogen, where the electron is excited and transitions...