Our Planets (all but Earth)

[LightEye]

dear friends,

more signs of cosmic warming... ;-)

http://space.newscientist.com/articl...mg19826575.800

be well, be love.

david

early images reveal frosts on pluto
21 may 2008

frost has been seen vaporising on pluto for the first time, though the pictures of it were taken in the 1930s, soon after the dwarf planet was discovered.

a team led by bradley schaefer from louisiana state university in baton rouge measured pluto's brightness on 32 photographic plates taken at us observatories in 1933 and 1934. using modern techniques, the team was able to measure pluto's brightness far more accurately than at the time.

comparing the results with observations from the early 1950s, the team showed that pluto darkened by about 5 per cent in the intervening years. the results will be reported in the journal icarus.

pluto's brightness always appears to be changing because its colour is uneven and its rotation axis is highly tilted, so our view of it gradually changes from its north pole to its south. but in the early 1930s and early 1950s the same southern latitudes faced earth, so geometry can't explain the darkening.

the finding suggests pluto's thin atmosphere froze when it was farthest from the sun in the 1930s, then the bright methane and nitrogen frost vaporised as it moved closer in the 1950s, as had been expected. "but now we've actually got the smoking gun," says schaefer.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://space.newscientist.com/articl...3_head_dn13986

be well, be love.

david

mars scientists ponder polygon mystery
12:54 27 may 2008
newscientist.com news service
ivan semeniuk, pasadena

scientists working with images from the mars phoenix mission are baffled by an unexpected difference between what they thought they would see and what phoenix is now showing them.

the difference suggests that the northern plains of mars may be a more complicated and active environment than previously imagined.

phoenix landed on monday at 0053 gmt (1643 pdt on sunday). since then it has been relaying images and data back to earth via the mars odyssey orbiter, which periodically passes over the landing site.

among the most spectacular images thus far is a colour mosaic of the terrain looking out from the northward side of the lander. it clearly shows the so-called "polygons" that are typical features of this region.

there's just one problem: the polygons are too small.

size surprise
during a press briefing yesterday, principal investigator peter smith of the university of arizona, tucson, us, said that preliminary estimates suggest the polygons in the foreground of the image are about 1.5 to 2.5 metres across.

this is much smaller than scientists estimated based on overhead views from the mars reconnaissance orbiter and on models of the martian climate.

"i think it means that there are polygons within polygons within polygons," said smith. "at different climate times there may have been big polygons and at other times there may be small polygons, and it just may go back and forth over time."

polygons are produced by seasonal expansion and contraction of ground ice. when the ice is very cold it contracts and fractures in geometric patterns, much like mud cracks in the desert.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

"where there's water there's life as we know it - nasa."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...-ice-mars.html

be well, be love.

david

scientists find ice on mars
by daily mail reporter
last updated at 12:24 pm on 02nd june 2008

nasa scientists yesterday said they had found ice on mars -- a step towards finding evidence of life.

sharp new images received from their phoenix lander convinced scientists that the spacecraft's thrusters had uncovered a large patch of ice just below the martian surface, team members said.

that bodes well for the mission's main goal of digging for ice that can be tested for evidence of organic compounds that are the chemical building blocks of life.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://xenotechresearch.com/phmove1.htm

be well, be love.

david

obvious changes in phoenix images
something appears to be moving

in the latest phoenix images, we have a number of those taken by the camera mounted on the robotic arm. some show the footpad prints and soil in good resolution, but two odd features are clearly shown that cannot yet be explained. we will examine both and what appears to be an object that has emerged from the soil.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

more interesting thoughts from joseph...

http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com/e...nder-life1.htm

be well, be love.

david

mars opportunity rover lands in life: part-1 of 4
report #141
june 15, 2008
joseph p.skipper
j. p. skipper can be contacted at: jskipper@marsanomalyresearch.com

most of you didn't know that i and this work had been invited to appear at the society for scientific exploration's (sse) annual meeting to present some of this work's evidence near the end of june and they were footing the bill for it. i had accepted and most definitely wanted to appear before this group of learned phd's and scientists out on their own lonely cutting edges of science. why? because of my respect for their straight forward curosity and making such an offer favorable to this work by simply treating it objectively.

treating this work objectively is really all that it takes to get me interested but i still had to back out with an early notice to them nearly two months ago. the reason is in part because the preparation for this meeting required too much of my now very limited time and in part because i am very slow in what i do. obviously, both factors gobble up a lot of time.

also, primarily it would have interfered with the coming soon release of my book and its strong water and biological life evidence and i can't let anything interfere with that. likewise, leaving my little safer sphere of influence to go out in the world across state lines where i may be more vunerable may have been a bit risky prior to the release of the book as it might tempt my adversaries a little too much, that is if they thought some action against me might stop the book's evidence release. once the book evidence is released, my risk factor goes down some simply because what's the point for them after that?

however, i haven't forgotten about the sse open honest offer and still appreciate the demonstrated objectivity, so this report is dedicated to them whether any of them agree with the report's content or not. this evidence is some that i have been holding back ever since the opportunity rover landed on mars years ago. i did so thinking that i might include it in the book but presenting it requires too much dedicated imaging for that on just one evidence of life and so this is a good place for it. some of the evidence is interpretive when considered isolated and lone but i think i have enough collective visual evidence tied together to make a good case for what will be revealed here in this reporting. so now let's get on with it.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/ha...-dual-hotspots

also this;

jovian-like aurorae on saturn
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture07077.html

be well, be love.

david

has electrodynamics solved the mystery of saturn's dual hotspots?
by mgmirkin | june 16, 2008 at 05:52 pm

it is generally believed that falsifiability and predictive ability are two cornerstones of science. as a corollary, the critical experiment (experimentum crucis) is a widely accepted method of determining which of two mutually exclusive theoretical viewpoints hits closest to the mark. recent data from saturn may provide just such a critical experiment, but the answer doesn't appear to be what many scientists expected.

opposing viewpoints were registered back in 2003 with respect to a peculiar feature at saturn's south pole. the issue stems from a 2003 keck observatory press release that noted a strange hot spot at saturn's southern pole. the issue was not the hot spot itself, according to the keck team, but that fact that its structure did not conform to that predicted by a solar heating model.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

weird indeed...think the movie mission to mars...

http://keithlaney.net/weirdestmars/weirdestmars.htm

be well, be love.

david

weirdest mars because it's time

on these pages i will be displaying curious items found during mine and others near decade long journeys into the vast imaging archives of the mars global surveyor. during the course of these explorations i have witnessed many paradigm shifting items and locations. this goes beyond any face, or cydonia, it goes planet wide, because while singularity may be coincidence, multiplicity defines a pattern. it is my opinion that mars was once much more than presently researching sciences can account for. somewhere between the artful and sometimes uncannily accurate predictions of science fiction or serial comic writers, and the hard data analysis of a scientific community too ready to dismiss the probability there does stand a possibility, one which can be backed somewhat by photographic evidence. i'll go ahead and say it, then maintain the tone throughout, because it is the subject of this foray; that incredibly, there may have been a prior civilization on mars.

because both the photo archives and world of mars itself are vast and varied, many who've attempted a look at it through the high resolution images invariably may never have noticed some of these more interesting and curious of items. i have the advantage of many years experience processing moc images and sorting out the martian surface, and over time have amassed quite a collection of oddities in result.

i intend to show them to you and in doing so, thoroughly make you wonder what we really know about our brother planet. this will be without much image interpretation, or crayon scribbling- mainly because i think it clear that the images speak well enough for themselves.

i will say this in guideline; i recognize what is left of a previously very living planet, with huge bustling metropolitan areas, scattered here and there much like present day earth; along rivers, oceans, and mountains, some replete with monolithic constructions and large areas where mining activity is apparent. from all evidences nobody's lived here for a long long time. all is now almost gone, bones left to the ages, covered by dust and wrecked in all but the best preserved cases. occasionally and over time these remnants are exposed by fortuitous winds and erosional processes to be revealed to our eyes through the irises of our technology.

to see what mars was, it is absolutely necessary to recognize what it is showing us, chance have it we see. what it reveals to the adroit and open minded observer is a terror unimaginable. a fate we may one day face ourselves. global catastrophe.

a world that was, and is gone, a relic of destruction. a lesson to be learned?

whatever horrendous cataclysm it was that occurred to mars is beyond our knowledge at present, but whatever it was it buried barsoom. who were these people, if they existed at all? perhaps they were like us, perhaps they were us, perhaps it's nothing at all, just strange rocks and dunes. all of this may sound a bit burroughs-ish, perhaps totally absurd, but for a world named barsoom, speculated so much on, and covered with such oddities, this ought to be expected. it seems it doesn't think much of what we think, regardless.

what we are left with is a question that is unanswerable at present but one which imperatively must some day have a solution, one which will come only via further exploration... what was mars? will come only via further exploration... what was mars?

[LightEye]

dear friends,

i knew this was ice the first time i saw the image a few days ago......"and where there's water..."

http://space.newscientist.com/articl...e-on-mars.html

be well, be love.

david

phoenix lander uncovers ice on mars

chunks of bright material unearthed by nasa's phoenix mars lander have vanished again after around four days. scientists say this is the "smoking gun" that convinces them they've found water ice, which vaporised when exposed to the martian atmosphere. watch an animated gif of the ice vaporising.

"it must be ice," says phoenix lead scientist peter smith of the university of arizona in tucson, us. "these little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days – that is perfect evidence."

the phoenix lander uncovered the bright material when its robotic arm was widening a trench, informally called "dodo-goldilocks", on 15 june. a camera called the surface stereo imager revealed bright chunks roughly a couple of centimetres wide at the trench's base.

vanishing chunks

one possibility was that the chunks were some kind of salt. but four days later, new images revealed that some of the chunks had vanished. "salt can't do that," says smith.

the phoenix team concludes that the bright material must be water ice that vaporised when exposed to the martian atmosphere, a process called sublimation.

the lander's robotic arm has also hit a hard surface that might be dense ice while digging another trench, dubbed "snow white 2". the arm went into a holding position after three attempts to dig through the hard material – the expected action when the arm hits something that's challengingly hard.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

"and where there's water..."

http://xenotechresearch.com/icecolor.htm

be well, be love.

david

this is an image constructed from phoenix sol 024 data using ra, rb, and rc filter data. i used calibration data from dr. dan britt (thank you for the information, dr. britt) and from the known color and illumination data from the solar spectrum, as well as existing data from opportunity and spirit.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mznddyvg2se

be well, be love.

david

cool mar's pictures. they clearly show that something probably used to live there