Here’s something fascinating and puzzling, maybe WUWT readers can help figure this one out. There’s also a neat flipbook animation below the read more line.
Wayne Jaeschke writes:
Here’s a stumper for any Mars experts. While processing my Mars images from last night, I found a strange feature over Acidalia (top right of the animation below). I made this 5-frame animation of the green-light images. The feature appears in all the channels, but is most visible in blue and green and least visible in IR. Also, it moves with the planet (ruling out dust motes on the sensor) and seems to rise over the limb. Fog rolled in after this, so there is no additional data later than this. If anyone caught Mars after 2:15UT last night, please check your images… particularly after 2:51UT.
Update Note: for those of you Mars geographers, the most appropriate geographic location to cite for where the feature resides is Terra Cimmerium. Acidalia was where I thought it was at first glance, but the measured location is 190 degrees by 43 degrees (South) placing over Terra Cimmerium.
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My thought is some sort of volcanic eruption, as that would be the only thing I could think of that would make an elongated plume that high…but this seems to be even too high for that, but then again Mars has the tallest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, at 22 km (14 mi) high. If it were volcanic, it would be a first. According to Wikipedia: [Astronomers] have never recorded an active volcano eruption on the surface of Mars; however, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter photographed lava flows that must have occurred within the past two million years, suggesting a relatively recent geologic activity.
Barring that, maybe some sort of gravity induced comet disintegration?
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How about a tornado?
Garrett says:
Of course, most of you here would scoff at anything Phil Plait (The Bad Astronomer) would say.
Anything? No, only the most blatantly silly piffle that he spouts. The rest of his writing (particularly the astronomy stuff) is OK. Sadly, however, the best part of his exclamation mark-riddled piece was the link to Cloudy Nights, where the real discussion between practical and practised observers is taking place, including the person who imaged the phenomenon.
People are currently leaning toward a mesospheric cloud, although there were rumblings of the possibility of it being an artefact of image processing. But, if it’s real, it’s high (anything up to 100 km), and whilst not unheard-of, it’s certainly unusual.
Willam Abbott says: March 28, 2012 at 7:59 am
no asteroid – a small comet, the same source of the nacreous clouds on earth.
http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/
This is the most neglected astronomical discovery. Ever. Anthony had to shut the last thread down – it got metaphysical. All the planets are orbiting the sun in a flux of small comets. They constantly bombard the earth. Louis Frank’s work at the University of Iowa has never been refuted.
I can second most of that bar it’s being the “most neglected astronom discovery ever”. IMHO there are more serious omissions, and I am not going to talk about that here. Louis Frank is well worth a read, it’s very straightforward science – and his experiences of irrational rejection in the face of good evidence will be well-recognized by folks here. Interesting to consider that the cometoids may be the source of nacreous clouds, makes sense.
Volcanic steam eruption?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103511000054
http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=494
Discovery mag and MSNBC did report on Wayne Jeshke’s photos. More can be found on his own site: http://exosky.net/exosky/
There a close-up at http://exosky.net/exosky/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/21-March-0251ut.jpg, with an inset showing a steam-like plume, although I’m puzzled by the pixelation around the planet, looking like a pixelated selector-tool line.
Ok, possible this is an anomaly of some sort, I guess, but I’m still doutful and I’m puzzled why none of the big-arsed observatory or satellite telescopes, not to mention thousands of other amateur astronomers, have made contributions. Mars is close, although receeding, it being the month of March, after all, so you’d think there’d be hundreds of images.
Maybe not an April Fool’s shtik, but count me skeptical.
@Christoph Dollis says:
March 28, 2012 at 9:16 am
Alien cloaking device, obviously.
My guess is that it’s Romulan, but maybe others with more expertise can weigh in…
Oops…’Romm’ulan
If anything, dust.
vukcevic says:
March 28, 2012 at 8:44 am
With a bit of enhancement I got this:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Mars.htm
Hi vukcevic,
How’d you do that? If I may ask. Increased contrast and/or saturation? I’m not at my PC with Photoshop until later today, but would like to play too. I’m thinking the emboss function might separate some of the planes and delineate them nicely, but with the distance of the planet and the resolution, we can’t get relative distances of features within the cloud/plume itself. Thing to remember is that with this quality all we are enhancing is an image with a lot of quirks and limits inherent to a digital photo through a lense of unknown quality.
A message for any who think it is volcanic in nature:
The Olympus Mons Volcanic region is dead center in the upside down image (The North Pole is at the bottom of the image.) The caption and accompanying story states that the image is Least Visible in the IR (heat) spectrum. Volcanism on terrestrial (rocky) is created deep within the mantle and releases heat along with the pressure that the heat creates. (even on Icy Enceladus, the Ice geysers are measurably warmer than the surrounding surface temperatures.) If this event were volcanic in nature or even the result of an impact (which also creates heat) it would have a much stronger Heat Signature in the IR end of the spectrum.
Mars does have a sporadic magnetic field though not as organized as that of Earth, Jupiter, or Saturn as Mars’ core is cold and the interior magneto is turned off.
Per AstroBob, there is a localized area of Highly Magentized rock located in the Terra Cimmeria region, Where this anomaly is located.
See:
http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2008/11/27/here-there-and-everywhere/
Do magicians reveal their secrets?
/partial kidding
I wonder if there are any higher resolution images than those existing in the head post?
.
From the images it seems awfully high above the surface to be a cloud.
If he’s that gullible to believe in AGW, then I have no respect for him. But that has no bearing on whether he’s right or wrong about this.
Since the warmists admit that their models don’t handle clouds well, I’d think that using those models to come to a conclusion that the image shows a cloud is a mistake.
From the height above the surface, it looks to me like it has to be a meteor hit, if it’s not a photoshopped hoax. However, I admit that the height as it appears in the image could be misleading.
Peter Kovachev says:
March 28, 2012 at 10:11 am
vukcevic says:
With a bit of enhancement I got this:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Mars.htm
Hi vukcevic,
How’d you do that? If I may ask.
Hi Peter
by increasing gamma correction in steps of 1.5
Its worse than we thought — CO2 plumes from Mars.
It’s Martian Global Warming caused by CO2 on Earth.
[;)]
Thanks, Vukcevic will play with this one!
Willam Abbott says: March 28, 2012 at 7:59 am
no asteroid – a small comet, the same source of the nacreous clouds on earth.http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/
This is the most neglected astronomical discovery. Ever. Anthony had to shut the last thread down – it got metaphysical. All the planets are orbiting the sun in a flux of small comets. They constantly bombard the earth. Louis Frank’s work at the University of Iowa has never been refuted.
Better not ask, I guess, how a conversation about comets, even unusual ones, could get metaphysical. But, never mind, I’m onto something better! How’s about a theory, no less, that we’ve experienced a yet-to-be-detected increase of small comets vaporizing at a 330 mile altitude, dispersing into water vapor at 6 miles alt, which would explain global warming. Just as good, if not a better warming mechanism than the one suggested by the CO2 Warmies, no? Let ‘em stuff that one elbow-deep into the tukhes of their new NOAA Cray toy and let’s see William Connolley tackle this one!
From your link:
The moon would then also be bombarded with these, less frequently because it’s smaller and has a lower gravity, but still around one per minute. Since the moon has no atmosphere, these ‘snowballs’ would impact the surface at full speed, say 18 mps. Such constant bombardment and subsequent destruction of the lunar surface would be obvious to a lunar-orbiter, yet this hasn’t been seen. What more would it take to refute the hypothesis?
Note also that you yourself are suggesting that one of these ‘snowballs’ created a huge plume visible above Mars. Wouldn’t the moon, with it’s lower gravity and no atmosphere, allow such a collision to reach even higher above it’s surface?
It’s the dust plumes from the Martian Space Fleet taking off en mass on their Invasion of Earth Mission. They arrive within the hour.
Just a wild guess. Could the CME of a few weeks ago stirred up the Martian atmosphere and caused a storm somehow? What was it, 25 Billion KwH of energy over three days was deposited into the Earth’s atmosphere, what about Mars? How would it react to that kind of energy imparted to it’s atmosphere? Was it in the target cone of the CME? What would that much energy do to Mars?
Another more likely guess. An impact of some kind on the Martian surface from a meteor or small comet?
All I can say is Great Photos.
It’s the dust plumes from the Martian Space Fleet taking off en mass on their Invasion of Earth Mission. They arrive within the hour.
Not that I subscribe to this theory, but I’m on my way down in the bunker to beat Tim Robbins with a shovel. It’s the precautionary thing to do.
“What more would it take to refute the hypothesis?” Hmmm … I don’t know … all I’ve got are (radio) observations which would seem to support the hypothesis.
A compendium of resources: Sam’s Meteor Radio Echo Page – http://www.k5kj.net/meteor.htm
From (courtesy of Google books with title “Observing comets, asteroids, meteors, and the zodiacal light”) Radio Methods of Meteor Observation
Meteor burst communications – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_burst_communications
NASA has an on-line receiver that you can listen to via the internet – NASA Meteor Receiver – http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/nasameteorradar.html
Stan Nelson’s Meteor Receivers – http://www.roswellastronomyclub.com/radio_meteors.htm
.
“Its not a jet of green gas coming from the surface of Mars is it? If so, watch out for giant cylinders landing in a few months.”
Bah – the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.
Meteor impact with dust high in the atmosphere could be an explanation. But then you should find a crater of some sort somewhere at the same latitude. I hope we will find out very soon.
It’s a contrail,,,without a birth certificate 🙂
Assuming it’s not just a March Fools’ Day prank, I’ll go with global cooling. (blizzard, if you will, John W.) There are other possibilities, of course:
http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/mars-attacks-trailer/gRg0SEUaSMQpElEXddONaQ