Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Eurpoean Space Agency - Cloud spotted over a volcano on Mars

Interesting find - Eurpoean Space Agency says they have spotted over a volcano on Mars!

Image Source
Here's whats been said:
We spotted what appears to be a particularly special VMC image we'd like you to look at. In the pictures from 2 July we were flying over the huge volcano chain on Mars, the Tharsis Montes. We spotted what appears to be an extremely long and thin cloud trailing from near the peak of the southernmost volcano, Arsia Mons, and we'd love to hear what you have to say about it!

The Observation:
VMC observed the pictures around 09:00 UTC on 2 July and they were transmitted to Earth and then posted onto the blog on 8 July. The images show a rotated view of Mars, with the North Pole to the top right of the image, and the South Pole to the bottom left. Load up the Celestia Script to see exactly where.

The three dark spots to the left of the image are the three Tharsis Montes, from left to right: Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons and Ascraeus Mons. The cloud is the small white streak running diagonally from Arsia Mons on the left towards the top left of the image. At the time the image was taken Mars Express was at an altitude of around 6500 km, and VMC conducted a 30-minute observation, capturing 34 images of Mars.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Taking pictures from 6,500 km distance is .....what shall we call it? Go further down guys, and tell us what's there in Mars! Take a picture of the earth from 6,500 km and see what it looks like.. no life, no water, no air, nothing.

Anonymous said...

As there has been no long term data on volcanic activity on Mars, we can only tell by recent images (Hubble, MRO, etc.) that there hasn't been much if any such activity on Mars since these closer images have been taken. If a volcano is erupting on Mars it makes me think of what Russian scienctists have been saying for the last few years, that ALL the planets are heating up (including Earth;global warming and all that)due to either an unknown body orbiting or entering our solar system or the solar system entering the galactic plane into a more energetic region of space. Jupiter and other planets have all been behaving strangely over the last few years. Keep watching.

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