The Space News Archive *Warning, massive resolution pictures inside*

[Beh]

Concerning the theory that black holes spit out stuf as well as sucking it in: I thought the spitting out was the duty of a white hole. I'd have to google it to be sure though. XD

[NinJa]

Thanks for the information Lon. I think Hawkings theory is very believable, but noone knows for sure. About that machine, I would welcome it, but not too many people would want to take the risks that you explained. I always wondered about black holes and did a lot of research about them, but no matter where I went, there wasn't anymore with any factual information about what they exactly are, just theories and observations, but I guess thats the best we can do, given we just can't drive to a black hole and experiment on it.

[LLR]

Thanks for the replys! 

I updated my black hole theory post up there, it now has a lot more stuff in it.  Ran out of time last night and the internet was wonky.
I think I'm done with the post unless I think of something else tonight.


And about looking into a job doing this, nope...  Just an interest in what goes on out there.  Would be a dream job though just looking at the universe all day and giving theorys!  Man that would rawk!   8)

And now the NEWS!

BLUE-SKY AURORAS: A solar wind stream hit Earth on May 20th sparking auroras so bright, they were briefly visible in the twilight blue sky above Nunavik, Quebec. Note the green wisps behind the light gray clouds:

"I took these pictures at 1 o'clock in the morning--and, yes, the sky was blue," says photographer Sylvain Serre. "At our latitude at this time of year, it is blue all night long. The sky is bright and I can see only a few stars."

In spite of the extra glare, "I saw the auroras with my unaided eyes," he says. "The clouds were bothersome, but the clouds were moving slowly while the northern lights were moving faster." This, plus the green color of the auroras, made it possible to sort things out.

Anorther solar wind stream is due to hit Earth on May 26th or 27th. Arctic sky watchers, be alert for wisps of green among the blue.

BTW, a huge event his happening THIS Sunday the 25th at 8pm EST.  I'll give 5 nerd points to who ever knows what the event is!   (If not I'll post it later anyway) 


-SpaceRancher

[LLR]

NEWS!

HOT COMET: On May 23rd, a comet plunged toward the sun, overheated, and disintegrated. A coronagraph onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) saw the whole thing:

The kamikaze comet was a member of the Kreutz sungrazer family. Named after a 19th century German astronomer who studied them in detail, Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a giant comet at least 2000 years ago. Several of these fragments pass by the sun and disintegrate every day. Most are too small to see, but occasionally a big one catches our attention.

Note: In the movie, the passage of the comet seems to trigger a coronal mass ejection (CME): diagram. This is almost certainly a coincidence. The comet was at least a million kilometers above the surface of the sun at the time and there is no known mechanism for a comet to trigger a magnetic explosion across such a gulf.






Also... What happens tomorrow night at 8pm est? 
*drum roll*

[Link Reborn]

wait, when and where is this comet visible? i want to take some photos.

[LLR]

May 25, 2008 - “Seven Minutes of Terror” for NASA On Sunday.

It takes 15 minutes for signals to travel between Mars and Earth, so the Phoenix Mars Lander will land on its own computer power. That means JPL Mission Control in Pasadena, California, will be waiting for data to know if the lander made it down successfully to the Martian North Pole. The earliest that JPL will know today is about 4:53 PM Pacific. NASA plans a mission briefing at 12 PM Pacific and NASA TV begins coverage at 3:30 p.m. Pacific.

“Approximately 14 minutes before touchdown, the vehicle separates
from its cruise stage. At this point we lose communication from the vehicle.
Getting EDL communication [at touchdown] - that'll be the three seconds that I am
really biting my nails over.” - Barry Goldstein, Phoenix Project Mgr.,
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory



Artist's rendering of Phoenix Mars Lander settling
toward Martian North Pole plains, scheduled for Sunday,
May 25, 2008. Illustration courtesy NASA
Phoenix Mars Lander will aim toward the Martian North Pole at about 12,600 mph (20,270 kilometers), then open a parachute to glide down for about 70 miles (113 kilometers) to the surface. During the glide down, the spacecraft needs to get rid of its heat shield, extend its landing legs and fire thrusters to cushion impact.

 

The North Pole was picked for landing because Mars Odyssey data indicates there is a large quantity of ice in the form of permafrost there, either on the surface or slightly underground.

Phoenix is equipped with a robotic arm that can dig down and scoop up some of that ice and dirt, to look for organic chemical evidence that life once existed there, or even still exists now. See:  Phoenix Lander Website.




TOUCHDOWN!

 A signal has been detected from Phoenix indicating that the lander is on the surface of Mars. Stay tuned for updates.






Phoenix Raw Image
This is a raw, or unprocessed, image taken by the Phoenix lander on Mars, May 25, 2008. This is a screen grab taken from NASA TV.
Phoenix Lands at Martian Arctic Site
NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander's robotic arm.
Above, an artist concept of the Phoenix lander on Mars.

More and full story

NASA's Phoenix Spacecraft Lands At Martian Arctic Site
May 25, 2008 NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander's robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.

Mission team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona, Tucson, cheered confirmation of the landing and eagerly awaited further information from Phoenix later tonight.


About the Comet, its in front of the Sun!  So I'm guessing it won't be visible for quite some time. 

**Edit**
Nifty Video!
History of Phoenix and its mission

[LLR]

Tiny sunspot 997 emerged yesterday and is already fading to invisibility. Credit: SOHO/MDI



CARTWHEEL CME:  Imagine a billion-ton cloud of gas launching itself off the surface of the sun and then ... doing a cartwheel. That's exactly what happened on April 9, 2008, when a coronal mass ejection or "CME" pirouetted over the sun's limb in full view of an international fleet of spacecraft. The cartwheel set off a chain of events that amazed even veteran solar physicists Full story





SPACE FOSSIL: On May 23rd, Ralf Vandebergh trained his backyard telescope on the International Space Station (ISS) as it flew over his home in the Netherlands. The picture he took revealed a bright, modern spaceport, bustling with crew and docked spaceships (Jules Verne and Progress M64).

Minutes later, another object flew overhead, small, dim, and, unlike the ISS, from the past. "It was the upper stage of a legendary Vostok 8A92M rocket, the same rocket used in the 1960s during the first Russian manned flights," says Vandebergh. "This one was launched in 1979." He swung his telescope to the old rocket body, took a picture, and placed the image beside that of the ISS:

"It was no easy job to catch this small object," he says. "The Vostok was dim and moving really fast compared to the ISS, making it difficult to keep it in the crosshairs of my finderscope as I tracked the spacecraft manually across the sky."

"This is like a fossil of space history in our night sky," he says. Indeed, you never know what might be flying overhead--even fossils.



Jupiter Grows Third Red Spot

 A potentially historic change is occurring on Jupiter. An upstart storm now rivals the gas giant's Big Red Spot as king of storms, astronomers announced last week.

The Little Red Spot, as it was named upon discovery in 2006, shows both size and speed in threatening to knock the former champion off its perch, with Junior's maximum winds reaching 384 mph (172 meters per second).

"In terms of maximum wind speed, the Little Red Spot as measured in 2007 and the Great Red Spot when last measured in 2000 are just about the same," said Andrew Cheng, physicist and lead study author at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

Those winds far outstrip the 156 mph threshold that defines a Category 5 hurricane on Earth, and the Little Red Spot itself appears nearly as big as our whole planet.

Seeing spots

A third red spot on Jupiter was also announced last week by a different team, joining its larger super-storm cousins. The Great Red Spot has raged on for at least two centuries and perhaps as much as 350 years, ancient observations suggest.

Cheng's team used image maps made by the New Horizons spacecraft to gauge wind speed and direction.

The Hubble Space Telescope provided visible-light images of the storms, while the Very Large Telescope in Chile used mid-infrared to glimpse the thermal structure of the storms below the visible cloud tops.

The thermal heat images showed that the Little Red Spot may already match the Great Red Spot for size, although the latter still appears almost twice as large on the surface of Jupiter's atmosphere when examined in visible light.

"In the infrared, which sees deeper beneath those clouds, the Little Red Spot appears to be part of an interacting system that is actually larger than the Great Red Spot," Cheng told SPACE.com.

The Little Red Spot has steadily gained strength even as the Big Red Spot shrinks.

Both storms have winds that circulate in the opposite direction to that of a cyclone, or counterclockwise, and appear "strikingly similar," Cheng said.

Seeing red

Astronomers remain mystified by the angry red color of the storms. The Little Red Spot only changed color in late 2005 after it formed from earlier mergers of three smaller storms.

Similarly, the newest third red spot began as an oval white storm.

These latest findings support the theory that the most powerful storms dredge up material from below Jupiter's clouds and lift it into the upper atmosphere. That exposes the material to solar ultraviolet radiation and causes the color change to red.

The newcomer storm may end up merging with the Great Red Spot or getting pushed away when the two encounter each other in August, assuming their paths remain the same. The Little Red Spot lies at a lower latitude and will pass the Great Red Spot in June.

Such changes in Jupiter's weather come as part of a global upheaval that began before the New Horizons spacecraft visited last year.

The idea that Jupiter is undergoing global climate change was proposed in 2004 by Phil Marcus, a mechanical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley.

He predicted large changes in the southern hemisphere starting around 2006 that would destabilize jet streams and spawn new storms.

Much of the activity in the gas giant's South Equatorial Belt has disappeared and left the Great Red Spot isolated, foreshadowing even greater changes to come.

"The Great Red Spot may not always be the largest and strongest storm on Jupiter," said Glenn Orton, planetary scientist and study coauthor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.



***Odd fact***
2008 is also being known as the worst year in recorded history for large tornadoes. Related?  You probably already know what I think..







**Edit** Update
TRICKY MOON SHADOWS: Amateur astronomer Mike Salway of Central Coast, Australia, woke up before dawn on May 25th to photograph Jupiter. The giant planet materialized in the eyepiece of his 12-inch telescope along with giant moon Ganymede and a deep, dark moon shadow just behind it on Jupiter's cloudtops. Contrary to appearances, however, the shadow did not come from Ganymede. Scroll down to find the source.

Salway's panoramic photo reveals the responsible moon: Europa.

Salway's panoramic photo reveals the responsible moon: Europa.

"As Ganymede was transiting Jupiter, Europa cast a shadow apparently nearby. Meanwhile, off to the right, Io was about to be eclipsed by the much larger shadow of Jupiter itself," he says. So many moons, so many shadows! It can get a little tricky, "especially at 5 o'clock in the morning."

Yet 5 o'clock in the morning is the best time to see Jupiter. Train your telescope on the brilliant "morning star" in the constellation Sagittarius and see if you can sort things out

[Link Reborn]

how often do sunspots emerge?

[Minish Majora]

Finally caught up with the information.
I heard about the Mars landings on the news, it will be interesting to see the results.

When will the big Red Spot Stop?

[LLR]

First, Sunspots will form at random, like storms.  But they have a lul every 11 years.  Its a cycle.  Each cycle shifts the polarity of the sunspots from north magnetic to south magnetic.  Right now the sun is going through a solar minimum but.... Its really starting to pick up.   The sun will reach is peak of solar storms and sun spots in 2012-2013.  I think theres a chart up there somewhere that has a more detailed explanation of when sun spots form.  Also, the sun is going through a mega cycle that only happens every 10 - 15 thousand years.  This is because of a galactic alignment with the center of the galaxy.  This only happens every 10 - 15 thousand years and it causes the Sun ( and other planets) to go nuts.

About the storm on Jupiter, the main red spot has lasted for a few hundred years (600 I believe)  the NEW red spots are only a few years old.  We really don't know how long the storms will be around.  However its a BIG DEAL that it has formed new ones.  THATS never been seen before.


The news!

No sunspots today!  Blank sun!


LOOK OUT BELOW!  In the 50+ year history of the Space Age, no spacecraft from Earth has ever photographed another spacecraft landing on an alien planet--until last Sunday. High above Mars, the powerful HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter watched Phoenix parachuting safely to its landing site in the martian arctic:

Although Phoenix seems to be descending into a 10-km-wide crater named Heimdall, "that is just an optical illusion," says Alfred McEwen, HiRISE principal investigator at the University of Arizona. In fact, "the lander is 20 km in front of the crater" and in no danger of tumbling down its rocky slopes. After this photo was taken, Phoenix drifted on by and landed in a rock-free field of icy polygons--just where mission planners wanted it to go
More Photos


-Spacerancher

[LLR]

Well, time to start looking at the sky again.   ;D

Today..

ISS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT:  Veteran sky watcher David Moore of Dublin, Ireland, has sighted the ISS with the naked eye in broad daylight. "I saw it on June 2nd around 9:21 pm local time while the sun was still 2.1o above the horizon." Impossible? Consider the following: Venus is visible in daylight, and the growing ISS (with Discovery docked alongside) is now brighter than Venus. "It was remarkably easy to see," he says, "even though I was not wearing my spectacles." Of course, the space station is still easier to see in the dark. Check our simple Satellite Tracker to find out when to look.

FULL VENUS:  On June 9th, Venus will pass directly behind the sun--an event astronomers call "superior conjunction." Sun-blocking coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) are monitoring Venus as it disappears into the glare:



Too bad we can't peek around the sun's limb on June 9th to see Venus on the other side. Like the Moon, Venus has phases and on June 9th the planet will be gloriously full. The entire hemisphere facing Earth will be illuminated. Venus's acid-laced clouds are terrific reflectors and a full Venus would surely be visible during daylight hours, an intense pinprick of light in the blue sky. If only the sun was not in the way....

A SCOOP OF MARS:  Phoenix's 7.7-foot robotic arm has reached out and taken its first scoop of Mars. A camera attached to the arm snapped this picture of the harvest on June 2nd:



Note the bright white material highlighting the red crumbly soil. "We don't know what this material is yet," says University of Arizona's Pat Woida, a senior engineer on the Phoenix team. It could be "ice, a salt or something new."

This first scoop was just a test, a light workout for the newly extended arm, and the contents were dumped back onto the ground. Soon, however, similar samples will be drawn inside the lander for analysis by microscopes, electrical and thermal probes, a mass spectrometer and a wet chemistry lab. The mystery material may yet be known. Stay tuned for updates.



ASTEROID FLYBY:  Today, asteroid 2008 KT is flying past Earth only three times farther away than the Moon. To students of ancient history, any asteroid named "KT" may sound a little scary. But unlike the 10-km-wide killer that crashed into Earth at the K-T boundary 65 million years ago, modern-day asteroid 2008 KT is a pipsqueak less than 10 meters wide. If it hit Earth, it would disintegrate in the atmosphere, producing at most a harmless fireball and a scattering of meteorites on the ground
Orbit



 Tiniest extrasolar planet found
Full story

[Minish Majora]

It will be interesting to see the results of Mars' soil but I doubt anything abnormal will crop up. How long will it take for the soil to be tested on Earth?

Keep up the updates Lon Lon 

[LLR]

Actually I found out some disturbing news about the Phoenix mission..

Its only going to last for...3 MONTHS..  After that the Sun dips below the horizion and it will be dark up there for 6 months.. during that time.. The batteries will fail and the whole thing will freeze and its insides will crack in half!  So its whole mission is now or never.  Kinda puts some pressure on this.  All that money and all that time just to do this..  Jeeze,  One reason its called Phoenix is after 6 months and the Sun rises again they will see if the ship can...  well.. come back to life..  Its not likely though.  So we should start getting some new info VERY soon.

My take though, I donno, it just sounds fishy.  I think the thing will survive and they are just telling us that it will fail and break down... Don't know why though, very odd.

But yes!  I'll post as many updates as long as the internet flows though my pc.

 8)

[Minish Majora]

???

Really with and the whole cost of the operation and everything at stake, you would have thought NASA would have time the project more intelligently. I would have thought NASA would start the project just when the sun is starting at the horizon to ensure the maximum time.

I think the batteries will regenerate though. NASA might just be using this as a safety net, just encase the batteries do fail and they embarrasses themselves.

[LLR]

???

Really with and the whole cost of the operation and everything at stake, you would have thought NASA would have time the project more intelligently. I would have thought NASA would start the project just when the sun is starting at the horizon to ensure the maximum time.

I think the batteries will regenerate though. NASA might just be using this as a safety net, just encase the batteries do fail and they embarrasses themselves.

I agree with that 100%.

[LLR]

MOON-MARS TONIGHT:  Have you been looking for Phoenix? It's on that little red dot right beside the Moon. Tonight, after sunset, go outside and look west. The Moon and Mars are gathered together only a few degrees apart. This makes Mars and all its inhabitants easy to find sky map

WHITE CLOD:  The crumbly material in this photo is about to be dumped into a furnace on Mars. The furnace is an oven inside the Phoenix lander, and the material is a scoop of Mars itself:



On June 5th, Phoenix's robotic arm gathered this sample of topsoil from a spot called "Baby Bear." It contains one of the mysterious white clods seen here and there on the ground around Phoenix and also contained in previous test scoops. Is it ice, salt, or something new and unexpected?

A trip to the furnace may tell. Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) is a combination high-temperature furnace and mass spectrometer. Material vaporized by the furnace is "sniffed" by the mass spectrometer to determine its chemical composition. Stay tuned for updates.




LONG DISTANCE SPACE STATION:  The International Space Station (ISS) has grown so big and bright that on June 3rd when the sprawling spacecraft flew over southern France, amateur astronomer Ralf Vandebergh was able to photograph it from the Netherlands. "Normally, I would never try to photograph the ISS so close to the horizon (34o elevation), but there was an important spacewalk going on and I really wanted to capture the scene."

Vandebergh tracked the ISS by hand, manually guiding his 10-inch telescope while a digital video camera recorded the view through the eyepiece. "In the animation, keep an eye on the space shuttle Discovery and you may be surprised how much detail you can see," he says.

Not visible in the animation are the ant-like figures of spacewalking astronauts busily working to install a new bus-sized module (Japan's Kibo science lab) delivered the previous day in the cargo hold of the space shuttle. The installation was a success and now the ISS is even bigger and brighter than before.

This weekend the ISS is making a series of lovely flybys over the Americas. Please try our Simple Flybys tool to find out when to look

[LLR]

HEAVENLY TRIANGLE:  Ringed planet. First-magnitude star. Crescent moon. Add them all together and you get a heavenly triangle visible tonight. Look up after sunset for Saturn, Regulus and the Moon in scalene formation: sky map.
MAP

PYRAMID ICE HALO:  When the residents of Tampere, Finland, woke up on June 6th and looked out at the morning sun, they were greeted by a fantastic display of nested halos. "I've never before seen four rings around the sun!" says eye-witness Emma Herranen. "Luckily, I had time to fetch my camera (a Canon 5D) for a quick self-portrait before heading to work."



These fantastic halos are formed by equally fantastic ice crystals, crystals shaped like pyramids. Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains:

"Imagine an ‘ordinary’ cloud ice crystal, a six-sided prism with flat ends. Now put an ice pyramid on each end. Finally, chop off the sharp pyramid points. The result, a twenty-sided crystal. Sun rays passing through them have a whole variety of possible paths and form multiple rings called ‘odd-radius’ halos. Emma saw 9o, 18o, 20o, 22o and 23o halos (simulation) and perhaps larger ones too in Finland, the 'Home of halos.' They are rare, but not that rare, look out for them!"


Awesome story..
CORONA LIGHT:  Yesterday when the International Space Station (ISS) cut through the evening twilight over Tucson, Arizona, photographer Scott Peshia had his camera ready and captured the flyby. He calls this snapshot Corona Light:



The ISS in blue sky? That's right, absolute darkness is no longer required to see the ISS. The growing space station is now brighter than Venus and more than one reader has reported seeing it in broad daylight. Space shuttle Discovery is currently docked to the ISS, which makes the complex brighter still. It's a beautiful sight. Please try our Simple Flybys tool to find out when to look.

Also, be alert for flares. Dave Nelson of Stoughton, Wisconsin, reports "I just watched the ISS go over tonight (June 6th)--a nice pass almost directly overhead. Then, as the ISS headed east, it flared better than any Iridium!" This is caused by sunlight glinting off one of the station's many flat surfaces. ISS flares are currently unpredictable; they are a breathtaking surprise.



About the Sun
For the past week the Sun has developed a sunspot only to dissolve it with in a day.  This has been happening all week long. As of right now, no spots.  However on the eastern edge, it looks like one is forming.  Stay tuned!


Phoenix update!
TROUBLE!  Ahh jeeze this is dumb..

Scientists ran into a snag when trying to deliver a sample of Martian arctic soil to one of the instruments on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, mission controllers said on Saturday.

The lander's robotic arm released a handful of clumpy Martian soil onto a screened opening of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) on Friday, but the instrument did not confirm that any of the sample passed through the screen.

Images taken on Friday show soil resting on the screen over an open sample-delivery door of TEGA, which is designed to heat up soil samples and analyze the vapors they give off to determine the soil's composition.

The researchers have not yet determined why none of the sample appears to have gotten past the screen, but they have begun proposing possibilities.

"I think it's the cloddiness of the soil and not having enough fine granular material," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, the digging czar for the $420 million Phoenix mission.

The Phoenix lander touched down on the red planet on May 25 to begin a planned three-month mission to hunt for buried water ice in the northern polar region of Mars. It is equipped with a scoop-tipped robotic arm, weather station, wet chemistry lab and eight ovens to study samples of Martian terrain and determine if the region could have once supported primitive life.

TEGA's screen is designed to let through particles up to 0.04 inch (1 millimeter) across while keeping out larger particles, in order to prevent clogging a funnel pathway to a tiny oven inside.

Mission scientists said they planned to send new commands to Phoenix to try to shake the sample into the oven as early as Monday. They'll spend Sunday developing the plan for the following Martian day.

The small vibration tool can shake the oven screen across a variety of frequencies, ranging from a light tapping to moderate shake, mission managers said.

"The soil that we're looking at is probably sandy and it has a lot of fine grains and dust, but it is also a little bit cohesive," Arvidson said. "I'm pretty confident that if we shake this stuff, we'll get some in."

For future samples, they may use the robotic arm to prepare a site by poking and prodding the Martian surface to break up clumps and clods. They may also collect smaller scoops of material to pour directly into the oven.

While this is the first oven they've tried to pour samples into, it is designated Oven 4 of eight. Despite the overflow of soil across the other oven doors, mission managers are confident the extra stuff won't hinder the opening of other instruments.

The TEGA ovens have an opening just 2 mm wide and are designed to collect about 30 milligrams of material for baking.

Phoenix's planned activities for Saturday include horizontally extending a trench, dubbed "Dodo," where the lander dug two practice scoops earlier this week, and taking additional images of a small pile of soil that was scooped up and dropped onto the surface during the second of those practice digs.

"We are hoping to learn more about the soil's physical properties at this site," Arvidson said. "It may be more cohesive than what we have seen at earlier Mars landing sites."




how silly, a 430 MILLION dollar mission is some trouble because of a small 4 dollar screen...  Hmm the wholes are too small to let clumpy probably frozen material pass through.  Thats a pretty big oversite..

[LLR]

A new sunspot is emerging at the location denoted by the circle. Credit: SOHO/MDI





MARSWORM:  What digs and squiggles through the ground on Mars? It would have to be a Marsworm:


Not really. It may look like a worm, but the segmented object at the foot of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is actually a metal spring. It sprung loose and fell to the ground when Phoenix's robotic arm unfurled shortly after landing. The spring is no longer an essential component; it was part of a mechanism holding the arm's biobarrier in place during the voyage from Earth to Mars. Now that the biobarrier has been unpeeled, allowing the sterile arm to move freely, the spring is no longer required and the ground is a fine place for it. Meanwhile, the only thing digging on Mars appears to be Phoenix itself.

[Link Reborn]

    Since you brought up life on mars, Lon Lon, I have a few Topics to discuss in this Thread.

My first shall be, the Nutorious Mountain that claims to be a "head" Of an alien with human-like characteristics in the Cydonia Region Of Mars.

For Those of you who do not know of this mountain Image on mars, Here it is:



   


Obviously, you might be alarmed by the accuracy of the shadowing onto the "face" of the landform.

However, Human vision is especially sensitive to such overinterpretation, the human brain is “wired” to see patterns, especially those of faces, as creating and perceiving patterns is what allows all animals to operate more efficiently in their environments. It's all in our mind or brain--we have a penchant for recognizing, with the faintest of stimulus from the environment, the likeness of our fellow humans.
   
Let's look at this from a more distant view/perspective...





   When you think of this, you may relate this to The ancient Aztecs or Mayans. You have a sanctuary of your kind, E.G. The Face, A City for your citizens, And the Pentagon shaped landform Is something you could relate to a Pyrmaid, Per Se. Could This not be just a race, but a Race with fuedalism, too?

Take Another Look:

I Inverted The Picture,

And Look in the red circle. It looks bashly similar to the Pentagon. If you Put that Into Comparison with an image of Different segments of moutains...



Let's take a closer look.


Now Zoom In...


There is an Aleged DIFFERENT Face, which most people then assume " Oh my gosh, if there two, there has to be more! There's civilization!"

Not so fast.

Refer to the inverted image of the Original face, and look at the Pentagon-shaped mountains.

Now Look around the sourroundings of The "Second" Face, while inverted..



Nothing even closen to "Pentagon" Shaped Mountains.

If they souppose cilivlation had habits of building similar cities, wouldn't they All have the same types of cities? Apparently Not. This "Face" Mountain was a misinterpreted Photo of a Mountain In Space.

Also,

Here is a photo of the Mountain at Day, then Night.



The mountain is located on the bottom of the Images, and clearly, there is No Mountain At Night.
The Original Image was by all means deciphered by mass histeria, rather than Logic And Truth.

Here is a close up image of the Original Face Itself Taekn by the Viking Orbiter:



Obviously, It has to resemblence to a Face Whatsoever.

[LLR]

Ooooo

*conspiracy mode activated*
I have Oodles of stuff on this subject, personally I have a VERY open mind about these sort of things.  (when ya see how big the universe is, ya kinda have to..its a BIG place)  However I'm not sure this is the proper thread for that sort of thing.    Factual news is one thing, theory of other worldly life and artifacts, thats another...

About that picture... interesting you think there is nothing interesting about that picture..

 This pre-sunrise NASA view is such an obvious embarrassment to those who have insisted for so long that this iconic Cydonia feature is “just a natural pile of rocks,” that it has been resolutely ignored by the naysayers ever since its acquisition. This, despite our own publication of a detailed analysis here at Enterprise (“The Light Finally Dawns at Cydonia ….”) for why this “pre-dawn image” is now so scientifically revealing ….

For, such abnormal, selective reflectivity – to say nothing of the obvious regular geometry blatantly visible all across the eastern side, as well as obvious color differences with other features right next door – cannot any longer be “explained” in terms of “natural Martian mesas” ….

When you composite this eastern-illuminated Odyssey image with a black-and-white western-lit Mars Surveyor view (acquired in 2001 -- below), and examine carefully the combined symmetry of the Face “platform,” the aligned nature of the “highly reflective geometry” with the centerline of the larger Face itself, and the repeating symmetry of other key features, east and west -- any further comparisons with “natural mesas” becomes blatantly absurd ….

Whose “protected” eastern side is apparently still exhibiting remnants of its original “anomalous composition and construction!”

The fact that over a decade earlier, Mark Carlotto and Mike Stein (then employed by The Analytical Science Corporation -- a Defense Department contract company), quietly conducted a major “fractal analysis” of this same object -- using computer algorithms later used (successfully!) for the first time in the 1991 Gulf War for the detection of Sadham Hussein’s tanks against the natural background of the highly similar Saudi deserts (below) -- and found that the Face is “the more non-fractal (‘unnatural’) than a Hussein tank” … is finally explained by this remarkable Odyssey pre-dawn Face image; for, it is now strikingly apparent that significant sections of the Face’s formerly highly manufactured (and still reflective) geometric surface … are still in place ….

This crucial view of the highly-reflective geometry still present on the Face’s eastern side (below) was acquired with only 20-meter-per-pixel resolution (~800 inches). Imagine what the MRO HiRISE camera – at 12 inches per pixel (!) … 66 times greater resolution than Mars Odyssey ... and in color no less -- could now confirm about this object ....

If NASA will only take the proper multi-spectral images… and at the proper time of day… during the two-year MRO Mission!!

Damn thing is awfully shiny...  I would welcome a topic on this.. and the moon.. theres actually a lot more interesting things on the moon than there are on mars..  heeheh..


And now the NEWS!

SOLAR ACTIVITY:  Even at the lowest ebb of the solar cycle, the sun puts on a grand show. Today is no exception. Pete Lawrence of Selsey, UK, calls this picture, taken this morning, Maelstrom and Prominence:

Deep in the heart of the maelstrom lies a dark, double-cored sunspot which Maxim Usatov of Prague reports "has just flared." Meanwhile, the gently-waving "delicate tendrils of the prominence" were an irresistible target for sketch artist Les Cowley of England.

"The sun is never boring