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Wayne Jaeschke
Amateur astrophotographer Wayne Jaeschke captured this image of a "terminator projection" rising up from the edge of the Martian disk at about the 1 o'clock position on March 22. The inset photo is a 200 percent enlargement of the region around the projection. For more, check out Exosky.net, Jaeschke's website.
Amateur astronomers are puzzling over a seemingly anomalous cloud that has shown up on images of Mars taken over the past few days. Is it really a cloud, or a trick of the eye? Does it really extend 150 miles up from the surface, as some of the observers suggest? And what churned up all that stuff, anyway? The amateurs and the pros will be trying to resolve those questions before the phenomenon fades away.
"It's not completely unexpected," Jonathon Hill, a member of the team at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, told me today. "But it's bigger than we would expect, and it's definitely something that our atmosphere guys want to take a look at."
Hill and his colleagues will be looking at the area where the cloud was spotted using the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, which is one of the instruments on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.
"In the command upload we're preparing to send today, we've included observations that will hopefully capture some of these recent clouds," Hill wrote in an email. "Our THEMIS camera on Mars Odyssey is capable of acquiring simultaneous visible and thermal infrared images, so our atmospheric researchers are pretty excited about the possibility of not only getting a good look at the cloud structures, but also their temperatures."
THEMIS will be checking out heightened cloud activity around Mars' shield volcanoes as well as around the southern site spotted by the amateurs. Pictures from a camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, called the Mars Color Imager, or MARCI, might provide further clues about the southern cloud feature. And amateur astronomers are sending out the alert for observers to keep a close watch on the Red Planet over the coming days.
There's been lots of buzz about the high-altitude cloud on Cloudy Nights and other online discussion forums for skywatchers. Sky & Telescope's Sean Walker says the puff of white was first noticed on March 20 by Wayne Jaeschke, an amateur astrophotographer from Pennsylvania. Since then, other observers have identified the feature in images going back as far as March 12.
All sorts of hypotheses have been proposed: Could it be debris kicked up by a meteoric impact? Is it a huge weather system? Is it merely a funny kind of glint caused by a combination of lighting and atmospheric conditions?
In an email, Jaeschke told me that the feature is "still there, although it has decreased in size over the past two days."
"This has led some to believe that it was some sort of transient-type event," Jaeschke said. So it's crucial to make as many observations of the area as possible over the next few days.
Wayne Jaeschke created this animated GIF image of Mars with the cloud coming into view on the upper right edge of the planet's disk. For more from Jaeschke, check out his Exosky website.
Walker says the feature is currently well-placed for viewing from the Americas. He says it should show up on the edge of Mars' disk around 1:10 a.m. ET Saturday, and 39.5 minutes later on each succeeding night. Consult the photos above for guidance on where to point a medium-size telescope — keeping in mind that these images are inverted to appear as they would through a telescope, with south pointing "up." Arizona State University's Hill says the area in question is called Terra Cimmeria.
Observation reports should be sent via email to Richard McKim, director of the British Astronomical Association's Mars Section. (The linked website includes McKim's email address, as well as a picture of the chap.)
Solving this mystery — if it indeed turns out to be an honest-to-goodness mystery rather than a mere quirk — may require additional data from the big guns of the astronomy world. But in any case, the episode illustrates once again how much amateurs can contribute to uncovering the wonders of the cosmos.
"When it comes to Mars, amateurs and professionals working together give you way more insight into ongoing processes, because with so many amateurs, you're continuously monitoring changes in the planet," Hill told me. "They provide a perspective and a context that we don't usually get."
More about amateur astronomy:
- Amateur takes stunning photo of new solar system
- Amateur astronomers discover a near-Earth asteroid
- 10-year-old Canadian girl discovers a supernova
- Astronomers sound death knell for supposed doomsday comet
Tip o' the Log to Sky & Telescope's Sean Walker and Kelly Beatty, as well as Wayne Jaeschke.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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No, no all of you have it wrong!!!!! It actually is the dust being raised by the Chinese construction crews that are building a new casino on Mars. They also cut a secret deal with Newt to have him act in the capacity of Governor for the new Mars colony where everyone weighs over 250 lbs and likes eating all things hog and are advocates of open marriages with the bottom bitch being a blond haired harpy with a line of credit at Tiffany’s with a line of credit of $500,000.00 and special space shuttle to take her back and forth to New York city so she can buy what she needs.
Why do we care? Mars is 'cold as hell' according to Elton John, the dust is finer than talcum powder and corrosive as acid. The wind blows there at speeds four times that of the strongest hurricane, no equipment except for a few little robots has ever survived the dust storms and our politicians want us to forget about how inept and incompetent THEY are and think about sending people to populate that planet -- before the Taliban takes it over. It could be anything, but we'll never know.
Mars is having climate change issues just thinking about Newt starting a colony there.
To anyone who has spent a holiday weekend at Anza Barego this dust cloud is no mystery .... just a bunch of off-roaders.
Impact from a meteor most likely.
Yeah, I can't wait for the nonsensical, nebulous explanation from NASA that will have all the alien fanciers (see: no self esteem) climbing out of the woodwork. Oh, and of course the inappropriate political crap from the usual inappropriate political crappers, proving yet again that America would be great if there weren't so many Americans.
NO NO NO NO your all wrong. Martian DEA burning largest crop of ganja every confiscated in the universe.
Someone call Tommy Chong... See if anything's missing...
It looks like something hit the ground, like a metorite. Woo.
Dust raised by a Reptilian construction crew, building an advance supply base. The base is for refueling, repair, and support, for the armada scheduled to attack us on December 21st 2012. We'll see more such activity in the coming months.
My goodness! We have finally found where Paul Ryan is hiding the truth about his budget proposal!
But seriously, folks, this should be a really cool finding! Meteor impact dust cloud? Mass wasting dust cloud (rock slide)? Mars quake dust cloud? Wind storm dust cloud? E.T. lift-off site (NOT!)?
At the suspected height of the cloud I'm rooting for impact site... Ya-Go Schumacher! We could watch the results for months!
Great now behemoths from final fantasy are spawning on mars.
Here's the organic methane astronomers have been looking for all along. Martian farts...
It's a Ninth Ray-induced, small nuclear explosion. Ras Thavas miscalculated.
Its just a alien fart ya'll.
The smoke cloud left after "John Carter" bombed....
The Face on Mars erupted in a massive burst of acne.
Why does it take a fuzzy picture from a backyard telescope to show this when there are 100's of millions of dollars of satellites orbiting Mars??? AND WHere T F is the hubble? It should have snapped a picture already !
We haven't seen a planet wide dust storm in a long time.
Probably a meteor impact.
Probably moochelle obama up there on a shopping spree and she farted...she likes to use that free (for her, not the taxpayers) airplane ya know!...: p
The cloud observation is a fascinating discovery. Fortunately, the satellites circling Mars will hopefully shed light on this mystery. www.classicmemories.com
What I'm wondering is why this 'storm cloud' seems to be maintaining it's place above the Martian surface. If you watch the clips you can see it moving along at a rate that keeps it above the same spot on Mars (geosynchronous orbit) instead of moving across the face of the planet. I hope that they get a few more close-up pics so we can see this 'cloud' a lot clearer & closer- a perfect opportunity to use Hubble for something close enough to matter. Not even the smega-storm of Jupiter's Red Spot sticks up into space like this thing does. Haven't we landed some scientific package with an earthquake detector that could tell us if this is the result of an impact? In the words of Mr. Spock- "Fascinating!"
The Coneheads nicked the planet when blasting past, just like they did to the Moon in the movie.
Either some teen Martians crashed their dad's ship while on their spring break (how long is Martian spring break?) or one of their antenna factories didn't follow emissions' standards and just is irresponsibly polluting the universe. Must be republicans up there too. Bummer.