New Mars Forums

Check out this close up. I wonder if this is of the rock you are talking about, Arccos.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … ...2M1.JPG

What are those tiny spheres? Children of the blueberries?

There is a flaw in my ring. When I first proposed it, it was a solid ring that had fiber optic input on the Sun side, and fiber optic outputs on half of the inside. Basically, the fiber optic inputs on the outside all lead to the output on the inside. Sunlight is channeled to inside of the ring, which rotates once every 24 hours. The amount of light reaching the planet’s surface is controlled. Extra sunlight can be used for energy.

On the new ring, I tried to simplify it. I took care of the dayside ‘day’ but I forgot about Venus’s night side. Perhaps the inside of the sphere can be mirrored and reflect some of the sunlight to the night side?

Could that be Earth and Venus in the skies of Mars.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … ...7M1.JPG

Here is where they are positioned when viewed from Mars;

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspac … ...bfov=30

One neat thing about the transit is that even though Venus had her dark side towards us when she was at her closest, we could still see her.

I wish I could have seen the transit (with the proper protective filters) un magnified.

Can you imagine how bright the Earth must have looked from Venus when that happened?

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Cindy, the problem with Venus is that when she is her closest to us, we see her dark side. Her size changes quite a bit from when she is full to when she is new.

This page has a good diagram that show it. http://www.absoluteaxarquia.com/nightsk … venus.html

Still, I think you are right. I looked again at the Venus transient pictures of the Sun, like this one;
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/ … nsits.html
and picture the sun’s disk (or Moon’s since they are the same apparent size) in the sky. Venus would be a dot. Someone with good eyesight might be able to make out a disk, but not me.

The Earth would be a very bright star as seen from Venus’ cloud tops. Someone with good eyesite might be able to make out a disk. You might be able to make out the Moon.

Might be. And look at the large rock to the upper right. And the one next to it might have some layering.

What do you think this would mean if they are blueberries. Where is all the hematite? This site had water, but it was a different environment from Opportunities site. If the historic chemical composition of the two area’s are different, but they produced similar blueberries, what does that say? Life made them?

Need more data.

How close is Venus to the Earth?

Take these figures;

-Venus's minimum distance from Earth is 38,050,900 km

-Moon’s distance from the 385,000 kilometers

And you get when Venus is at its closest to the Earth, like it was a few days ago, it is only 98.8 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. That is very close.

If you could switch Venus and Jupiter, when they are at their closest, Jupiter would look about half the size the full Moon does in our skies. Of course, we could be looking at the night side of Jupiter.

For this, I used the Moon’s distance from the Earth an divided  Jupiter’s diameter, which is 142,600 kms. That came out to about 2.6

Then use the first picture above, and visualize a circle that is slightly less than half the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Compare it to the second picture of the Moon, for scale.

So, from the Venus/Earth closest approach distance, you could see Jupiter’s disk easily with the naked eye. It would be about half the size of or Moon in our night sky.

Stu, wait until Spirit gets to "Lookout Point" and looks down into the Columbia Hill's inner basin at "Home Plate".

Here is some good stuff on Columbia Hills;

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … 0602a.html

Here is a good color picture of one of the Hills;

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … ..._br.jpg

Is it just me or is the sky getting purple. Between this picture, and the ones with the possible stars during the daytime, I would say the sky has cleared of most of the dust.

What would really help build such grand structures would be robots (I don’t think they would go on strike ). Self replicating type robots, or nano-bots could do most of the work. I don’t know how close we are to having such technology, but if it ever comes about, it will open up space.

Saturn in Titan’s skies

http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/TITAN … /TITAN.jpg

And, while I am at it, here are some other great paintings from Don Davis;

Galileo probe in Jupiter’s skies
http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/GALPR … LPROBE.jpg

Another one from Jupiter;

http://www.donaldedavis.com/DEC99NEW/DD … IOJUP3.jpg

It does not look so bad inside Endurance.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … ...M1.HTML

Opportunity should be able to get back out. I love this picture. Looks like a crazy tile job was done. Notice how small the blueberries are compared to the wheels.

Here is another view;

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … ...7M1.JPG

Some of the blueberries appear to be on pedestals. Look at the layered blocks of rock towards the bottom. The laying looks finer (Volcanic ash) Opportunity may need to go down there and check it out. Some good fault joints separating those big blocks.

I put it at the bottom of my photo page. Sorry about that.

http://startrektng.freewebspace.com/pho … photo.html