A Somewhat Spontaneous Science Flash

Lately, Christina has been supporting the European & Pacific Divisions of the PVL with a series of four presentations at the IPM and EPSC conferences in Berlin, Germany and the MSL Science Team Meeting in Pasadena, California. Despite this heavy workload, she was able to take time to put together an entry into the EPSC Science Flash competition. While she didn't walk away with one of the grand prizes, twitter gave her an honourable mention for her engaging presentation! Details below.

by Dr. Christina Smith

At some conferences there are events held that host talks that are a little different to the standard conference-style oral presentation. I recently attended the European Planetary Sciences Congress in Berlin, and at this conference the Europlanet Early Career Network hosted Science Flash 2018.  Science Flash is a competition in which researchers are challenged to present their research in three minutes using only a single slide and doing it in an interesting or unusual way. I discovered the competition on the first day of the conference and decided to give it go less than three days later!

My unusual method for presenting my research was inspired by rhyming stories I used to read as a child. I wanted to present my work as if it were a rhyming children’s story whilst also giving accurate information and background to one of the projects I’ve been working on. So, what follows is what I said word for word and my slide is the picture you see above – and yes I did put a crown on Curiosity!

Some casual science caveats because I had to condense what I was saying to make it fit:

1. Mars isn’t completely dry, there are ice caps, frost, recurring slope linae etc etc (see Brittney’sprevious post)

2. Gale Crater isn’t completely isolated, but “a little bit isolated” didn’t have quite the same ring to it...

I apologize in advance for what you’re about to read... It turns out that three minutes is a really long time when you’re speaking in rhyming couplets!

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Once upon a time on a planet dry as bone

A large rover wandered and called this place home.

This planet was, of course, Mars and in some ways so strange

But in others so similar to our own little stage.

For example it's atmosphere would not do for you and me,

Yet still it's good for clouds, fog, and snow which we see.

Though seeing these things isn't as easy as looking up,

Because they really are thin and that makes things tough

But we can see these by removing the mean

Of a series of images then features are seen

But this isn't all that a spacecraft can see

In the atmosphere of Mars, you know the dust is crazy!

Curiosity sits in a gigantic crater

And at the centre a mountain whose top's 5km up

This odd combination suppresses something that's called

The planetary boundary layer - but don't be appalled

This only means for a Rover living there

That this crater may be isolated for it's dust and it's air

So how can we test this from so far away?

We look to the crater rim so that we may

Measure the brightness of the sky, rim, and ground

And take their ratios because it was previously found

That near noon, plus or minus two hours

These ratios indeed hold lots of power

They actually tell us how much dust sits in the air

Between the little rover and the edge of the crater

But, I hear you say, don't rovers drive?

How can you compare, say, site one and 55?

Well, that's a good point but we did think about that

Dividing the total dust by the distance keeps the baseline quite flat

For then we are looking only at the amount per kilometer

Something that can be compared, despite the odometer

So what do you find, when you do this for all

Observations you made of the crater wall?

Well  we used Navcam, used usually to find

Where to go next and what to keep in mind

But luckily for us, these cameras are

Radiometrically calibrated oh yes, hurrah!

And what we find, is that the cycle repeats

How much dust is in the air, every year, that's neat!

But sometimes Mars does something strange

A global dust storm envelops it and it makes a big change

Curiosity's been watching the opacity rise then fall

Of the atmosphere above her and between her and the wall

It got really high, so high we couldn't see

Any features beyond what was nearly at her feet

But now the dust is waning, we see the wall again

Well most of the time anyway, it's not an exact trend

So here we leave Curiosity, happily working away

She's the Queen of Gale Crater, and long may she reign!