Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Catches a Dust Devil on Mars (Forwarded)
- From: Andrew Yee <ayee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 21:00:23 GMT
University Communications
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Contact Information:
Yisrael Espinoza, 520-626-7432
July 20, 2007
HiRISE Catches a Dust Devil on Mars
By Lori Stiles
The University of Arizona-based High Resolution Imaging Experiment
(HiRISE) group this week released a good look at a dust devil on Mars.
This is not the storm bedeviling NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit
and Opportunity.
The HiRISE camera captured the dust twister by chance in its photographic
swath of a region in the southern hemisphere near Hellas Planitia during a
Martian mid-afternoon early last month. The HiRISE camera is orbiting the
Red Planet on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The HiRISE image is of a region east of the Hellas impact basin and south
of Reull Vallis. Details on this and other new images are posted on the
HiRISE website,
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu
Dust devils form when the temperature of the atmosphere near the ground is
much warmer than that above. The hot air rises, and under ideal
conditions, forms a vortex that sucks in more warm air. If the vortex is
strong enough, it will raise dust off the surface, forming a dust devil.
Dust devils generally form in the afternoon because the sunlight needs
sufficient time to warm the surface. Local time when this picture was
taken was 3:08 p.m.
The bright material is the dust within the vortex. A dark shadow cast by
the dust devil is visible to the right. This dust devil is about 200
meters across (about 660 feet), but probably much smaller than that where
it touches the surface. Scientists estimate from the length of its shadow
that the dust devil is about 500 meters tall (about 1,600 feet).
The HiRISE camera takes images of 3.5-mile-wide (6 km) swaths as the
orbiter flies at about 7,800 mph between 155 and 196 miles (250 to 316 km)
above Mars' surface.
Professor Alfred McEwen of UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is
principal investigator for HiRISE.
Information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is online at
http://www.nasa.gov/mro
The mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of
the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science
Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is
the prime contractor and built the spacecraft. The High Resolution Imaging
Science Experiment is operated by the University of Arizona. Ball
Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo., built the HiRISE
instrument.
Related Web sites:
* http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu
* http://www.nasa.gov/mro
.
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