Cool. ~ ____ video Wind-Driven Traveler on Mars A dust devil spins across the surface of Gusev Crater just before noon on Mars. NASA's Spirit rover took the series of images in this spectacular 21-frame animation with its navigation camera on the rover's martian day, or sol, 486 (March 15, 2005). The event occurred during a period of 9 minutes and 35 seconds beginning at 11:48 a.m. local Mars time, recording the dust devil's progress in a northeasterly direction about 1.0 kilometer (0.62 mile) away from Spirit's perch on the slopes of the "Columbia Hills." The whirlwind was traveling at about 4.8 meters per second (16 feet per second) and covered a distance of about 1.6 kilometers (1 mile). Contrast has been enhanced for anything in the images that changes from frame to frame, that is, for the dust devil. The dust devil is about 34 meters (112 feet) in diameter. Image Credit: NASA/JPL link
Too much! Imagine being there and seeing something like that coming towards you. We'll have to be prepared for this sort of thing, and the huge dust (sand?) storms that occur from time to time. What a trip. Notice how, almost at the end of the video, that it seemed to change direction a bit? Thanks, KC. I meant to say thanks for the thread about Voyager(s) as well. That funding might be cut off from such amazingly long range and long term research is unthinkable. If these robotic probes on Mars just keep chugging along a lot longer than expected, as they already have, are we supposed to just "pull the plug??" After spending hundreds of million and thousands of man-hours just to get them where they are and working, when we are still getting a terrific amount of data? You just have to shake your head at even a suggestion of doing such a blatant act of stupidity.
If you look closely off in the distance a second one pops up ~ almost like we are watching a front roll through with tornadoes popping up along its boundary.
then it wouldn't be a tornado, I think. It would be called something else? Thank you for your photograph of one of us on Mars. Sincerely,
I've seen a couple pop up in the background, the first at the 221 mark and the second at the 473 mark. They only last for a couple of frames each.
It's too bad that at a bright time of day the video looks like it was taken at night. And what's up with the light show inside it?
Now I have the song Dust Devil by The Butthole Surfers stuck in my head. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
It looked more like someone was flashing a light on it. If the contrast was adjusted, wouldn't the background adjust as well? I just thought it looked strange.
