Category Archives: Mars

'Casts, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, saturn, venus

Awesomeness

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Celebrate It

I just read somewhere that March 10th is the International Day of Awesomeness.  It’s probably not an official government holiday or anything, but seems to exist to celebrate all things awesome.  So, what could be more awesome than the starry sky?  Living where I do (high in the mountains) with reasonably clear skies on many nights, I can step outside and look up and grok the awesomeness of the stars. And, this past week or so — and into March — the awe-inspiring sight of the planets Venus, Jupiter and Mercury just after sunset.  Mars is rising in the East, and if you wait a few more hours, you can see Saturn rising very late in the evening.  If you have binoculars or some kind of telescope, so much the better. You can check out Jupiter’s moons, for example. Or, if our own Moon is up, you can scan its cratered surface.  That’s the kind of astronomy awesomeness that gets people hooked on stargazing for life.

Speaking of telescopes, I know that people have a lot of preconceptions and misconceptions about ‘scopes.  When I worked at Sky & Telescope, we regularly answered questions in our magazines about the “best” scope to buy, the “most economical” and so on. Truth is, what you buy depends on what you want to look at, or if you’re planning to do astrophotography. Or, if you just want something you can easily pick up and take outside.  That’s where binoculars come in handy, and I’ve always recommended people start out with a pair of 10x50s as a good choice.  But, telescopes can give you awesome views, too.  I’d recommend you peruse Sky&Telescope.com or Astronomy.com for some good advice there.

The Galileoscope. Courtesy Galileoscope.org.

A former colleague from Sky & Telescope got involved a few years ago in a cool project called the Galileoscope. It was originally created to help celebrate the Interational Year of Astronomy in 2009. The Galileoscope is a small, build-it-yourself telescope that thousands and thousands of people have constructed and used to look at the sky. It’s a perfect way to introduce children to the sky and the instruments we use to observe it with.  You can learn more about the Galileoscope here, including where it can be purchased.  By the way, if any readers work in or run planetarium or science center gift shops, there are special discounts for bulk purchases to sell in gift shops. Check it out!  It’s awesome in its own right and worthy of celebration!

I mentioned above about how the planets are lining up for some gorgeous views in the next few weeks.  In fact, I focus on those views in the latest installment of Our Night Sky, the monthly stargazing program I produce for Astrocast.TV.  So, if you’re into some planetary viewing awesomeness, check it out. It’s about four  minutes long, and along with the planets, we look at a few constellations and a couple of deep-sky objects. It’s enough to get you started on some awe-inspiring sightseeing through the cosmos!

 

 

Mars, mars climate, Mars Express

Mars and the Search for Water

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Mars Express Radars Mars

New results from the MARSIS radar on Mars Express give strong evidence for a former ocean of Mars (marked in blue on this artist's concept of what early Mars may have looked like when this ocean existed). The radar detected sediments reminiscent of an ocean floor inside previously identified, ancient shorelines on the red planet. The ocean would have covered the northern plains billions of years ago. Credits: ESA, C. Carreau

It’s one of those no-brainer ideas: that water once existed on the surface of Mars.  All you have to do is LOOK at the planet and you see evidence of something that flowed across the surface.  There are washed out valleys, what look like river canyons, and regions that look like the shores of ancient oceans. If we had geologists (areologists?) on the planet, they’d make short work of determining what it was that flowed across the planet’s surface by taking surface samples and analyzing them.

Well, we don’t have people on Mars — yet. But, we do have spacecraft orbiting the planet and sitting on its surface sending us back all manner of daily data about this rusty, red desert world. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission has a radar instrument called MARSIS that bounced signals from the surface back to its detectors. The data in those signals told planetary scientists that at least one part of Mars is covered with sediments that were probably laid down on the floor of an ancient ocean.  The sediments contain minerals and possibly some ices that identify the area as the site of an ocean that existed perhaps 3 or 4 billion years ago, when Mars was very young, and possibly warmer and wetter than what we see today.

The oceans probably didn’t last very long; their water frozen into place, or vaporized and escaped through the planet’s thin atmosphere to space. So, the chances for life to form in those oceans were likely pretty thin.  Life or no life, the evidence for water flowing on the Martian surface in the dim recesses of history is pretty exciting. Now, the questions remain: where did all the water go and was there ever a chance that Mars harbored life?  Stay tuned!

Speaking of staying tuned, have you checked in on this month’s “Our Night Sky” at Astrocast.TV?  If not, why not?  Learn what’s up in the February skies!  You might find Mars…