These pages chronicle the work and ruminations of Carolyn Collins Petersen, also known as TheSpacewriter.

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I am CEO of Loch Ness Productions. I am also a producer for Astrocast.TV, an online magazine about astronomy and space science.

For the past few years, I've also been a voice actor, appearing in a variety of productions. You can see and hear samples of my work by clicking on the "Voice-Overs, Videos and 'Casts tab.

My blog, TheSpacewriter's Ramblings, is about astronomy, space science, and other sciences.

Ideas and opinions expressed here do not represent those of my employer or of any other organization to which I am affiliated. They're mine.

Visit my main site at: TheSpacewriter.com.

**Comments are welcome; I do moderate them to weed out spam.

Contact me for writing and voice-over projects at: cc(dot)petersen(at)gmail(dot)com

I Twitter as Spacewriter

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Avalanche Season on Mars

April 7, 2010 at 17:11 pm | 2 Comments

Whoosh!

Avalanche clouds on Mars

It’s springtime on Mars and with it comes avalanches near the north polar cap!

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRiSE camera team released this spectacular image of an avalanche on Mars. The dust-like particles are hanging a few tens of meters above the surface in a rugged region near the north pole of the Red Planet.

These are likely caused when a avalanche of carbon dioxide frost slide down the steep cliff wall you see here. The cliff itself is about 700 meters (2,000 feet) high and is a melange of layered water ice and dust. It’s very similar to what we see on Earth near our poles (and in fact, reminds me of some snow “dunes” we have near our house that have been piled up since early in the year). The bright stuff on the top surface is ice and frost made of carbon dioxide ice.

The cool thing about this view is that it’s helping the Mars scientists understand the processes that affect the Martian surface throughout the seasons, but especially during the freeze-and-thaw cycle that the planet experiences during late winter into spring. The HiRiSE teams have been spotting avalanches pretty regularly, which gives them a lot to study. They now know that these things come thundering down in the middle of spring — say during the Mars equivalent of April to early May. All together, it seems this is a regular spring process at Mars’s north pole that may be expected every year. Now, all they have to do is figure out the sequence of events that lead to these spectacular events. Stay tuned!

This blog a wholly pwnd subsidiary of Carolyn Collins Petersen, a.k.a. TheSpacewriter.
Copyright 2008, Carolyn Collins Petersen
Inama Nushif!
Image of Horsehead Nebula: T.A.Rector (NOAO/AURA/NSF) and Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA)

“It is by Coffee alone I set my day in motion. It is by the juice of bean that coffee acquires depth, the tongue acquires taste, the taste awakens the body. It is by Coffee alone I set my day in motion.”

TheSpacewriter

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Avalanche Season on Mars

Whoosh!