RE: New hi-def images from Mars
September 11, 2012 at 7:06 pm
(This post was last modified: September 11, 2012 at 7:35 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(September 11, 2012 at 6:00 pm)Napoléon Wrote: When out night fishing on a clear night there is always this one star that outshines the others. Perhaps this is Mars?
Mars is not the brightest body in the sky. Venus and Jupiter often outshine it by a large margin. But if seen alone, it can appear quite bright.
1. Mars is visibly red, so if you are not color blind, and the star does not appear red, then it is not Mars.
2. Mars is a planet with a resolvable disk, so in anything but the most turbulent air, it shouldn't twinkle. If it twinkles, it is not Mars.
(September 11, 2012 at 5:04 pm)Napoléon Wrote: Surprised you can even see Earth.
In theory, earth is so bright in Martian sky that our instruments should be able to see Mars from earth purely by the reflected light (as well as radiowaves) from earth. In real life the glare of the sun makes that impossible to actually do.
(September 11, 2012 at 5:08 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Really? We can see Mars from Earth, even in moderately light-polluted skies. Earth is almost twice the size of Mars and the Martian sky has no light pollution. Shouldn't be all that surprising.
Plus earth is 70% the distance from the sun as mars, so receive more than twice as much sun light per unit area as mars, plus the earth is twice as reflective as Mars, plus the disk of the earth is 4 times as large the disk of mars, means earth ought to be about 20 times as bright in the Martian sky as mars would be in the earth sky.
Plus Mars has hardly any atmosphere and little atmospheric extinction, unlike the earth, unless a martian duststorm is blowing.
(September 11, 2012 at 8:57 am)Haydn Wrote: This is really cool , im looking forward to more . But i am also interested in seeing pictures of the Earth/Sun and ther celestial bodys from the perspective of Mars .
Its a shame its 2 moons are too small for a solar eclipse , but i wonder what other phenomena it experiances and would be great to capture it .
You might want to google "Pale blue dot" and look for panaramic composite photo of the entire solar system with all 8 planets, taken by the Voyager 1 space craft as it looked back towards the earth one last time before shutting down its cameras for good, shortly after crossing the approximate heliocentric distance of the orbit of pluto.
Here you see a view of every planet in solar system from the perspective of just outside the traditional boundary of solar system. Pale blue dot refers to earth. Carl Sagan would wax lyrical (and memorable) over the amazing view.
