In the shadow of lunar waters

A map from McGovern, J. A., et al. (2012), Mapping and characterization of non-polar permanent shadows on the lunar surface, Icarus, 223, 566 – 581, doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2012.10.018 showing the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar south (in red) from a polar perspective. Jasmeer has been expanding on PVL's work in this area, adding in additional cold traps for our exospheric model and collaborating with researchers in Hawaii. His preliminary results are being presented as a poster here in Houston this week.

By Jasmeer Sangha

As you may have guessed from the posts preceding this one, I along with most of PVL am attending LPSC. This seems like as good a time as any to introduce my project which will be there in poster form. My project has grown and evolved since I last mentioned it on this blog, titled ‘The Waiting Game’. My current project is aimed to understand why the lunar poles ice abundances look as they do today. Observations have shown that water ice signatures are found near the lunar poles. However, unlike Earth, the local maximas of these ice signatures do not occur at the rotational poles. In order to obtain a full understanding of the processes on the lunar surface, my results and interpretations of those results will be built off of the groundwork done by three different people.

Hunting features on Mars Northern Polar Cap

There's nothing like a good morphological problem, especially in a condensable terrain (as in the HiRISE image above). While I've been vacationing on Pluto, Giang has been investigating polar cap surface textures on Mars. He presents his results, thus far, this week here at LPSC and is hoping to gain insight on the patterns he sees in conversation with other martian geomorphologists. Make sure to drop by his poster for an interesting discussion!

By T. Giang Nguyen

As the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) creeps up on my calendar, I grow more and more anxious to show off work on my most recent and still ongoing project. I have been tasked with analyzing the surface of Mars Northern Polar Cap hoping to find any trends or pattern present on the cap.

By finding any patterns embedded on the surface of Mars, I anticipate that examining these surface features may give insights into the inner workings of the Martian atmosphere. For example, if I happen to find features that resembles dunes, investigating that may allow me to infer various properties of the wind such as its direction or prevalence. The northern polar cap is interesting because of the ice, either carbon dioxide or water, that is deposited onto the surface which allows for interesting surface features and atmospheric conditions that created the features.

Estimating the Altitude of Martian Clouds at the Mars Science Laboratory Landing Site

Our second LPSC installment continues the focus on martian clouds, but this time, instead of looking at them from orbit, we examine them from the surface. The animated gif above shows a view from Curiosity. I, for one, find these animations quite relaxing. Over now to Charissa:

By Charissa Campbell

Clouds have been observed on Mars from the Curiosity rover's current location. This is interesting because it makes Mars seem more like another Earth and makes one wonder if this could possibly be our future home. However, as everyone knows, not all clouds are the same and have a variety of morphologies (shapes) and altitudes. Since Mars does not have a very thick atmosphere, in contrast to the Earth, the clouds are typically cirrus clouds which are the thin, high altitude clouds that are very wispy looking. One reason we want to study these clouds is to better understand the Martian climate.

Discerning the Details from the Big Picture: Determining the Geometry of Ice-Crystals in Martian Clouds Through Analysis of Orbiter Data

PVL is headed to Houston! Today nine of our group (!!) arrive at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas. For many it will be their first international conference (and for others their first conference, period!). I remember my first LPSC ('04 - if you are counting) well and hope everyone has as much fun and learns as much as I did. To kick things off, here's undergraduate Brittney Cooper. She has provided a MARCI Composite Image of Mars, (Image: NASA JPL) reproduced above, to add some visual interest and context - enjoy, and come visit us in the poster sessions and in our talks!

By Brittney Cooper

This week will be my first time attending the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) just outside of Houston, Texas. I’m very excited to have the opportunity to not only go to what is known as the largest planetary science conference in the world, but to also be able to present a poster on my research.

            For about a year now, I’ve been working on project analyzing images taken by the Mars Colour Imager (better known as MARCI). MARCI is a camera fixed to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) satellite, which as you may have probably gathered, orbits Mars. MRO reached Mars in 2006, and began its Primary Science Phase (PSP) in November of 2006, for about 2 Earth years.

The specific images that I’m looking at were taken during this phase, when MARCI was locked in a Sun-synchronous 3am-3pm orbit. This type of orbit is named as such because it’s a polar orbit in which MARCI sees all of MARS at essentially the same local solar time (LST), with MRO crossing Mars’ equator at an LST of 3 pm (or in other words, when the Sun is at a 45 degree angle from what it would be at noon). MRO also crosses Mars’ equator at 3am on what would be the dark side of Mars at that time, but of course MARCI does not image that part of the orbit.

Ultra-Violet, Ultra-Conference

A false colour image of Mars as imaged by the OSIRIS instrument in 2007. In this image the UV channel has been enhanced, which brings out the atmospheric cloud. Our research program here at PVL often leads us into ultra-violet territory, as Dr. Christina Smith details below!
(Image Credit: ESA & MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)

by Dr. Christina Smith

Last year I attended the 47th Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference (LPSC) in Texas for the first time. It was a very different conference to those I had previously attended. It is an enormous conference, around 1700 people attend each year, and covers many different facets of planetary sciences from dust and grains, comets and asteroids, moons, minor and major planets, and everything in-between. I really enjoy the variety of science that gets presented at this conference. In the morning you could be attending a series of talks about the Martian atmosphere and then in the afternoon you could be listening to talks about the giant planets' moons or about the surface of Pluto! It's impossible to get to see everything you'd like to see because there are 4 different sessions held simultaneously at most points of the conference, but by jumping in and out of the sessions you can get to most things!

This year I will be attending again, and I will be presenting a scientific poster of my work. Presenting your work to the community is an important part of scientific research, both for work that is in-progress and work that is completed and published. For work in the latter category, presenting your research allows you to publicize your work and get it "out there" in the community, which can only ever be a good thing. In the former case, presenting in-progress research allows you to get feedback from the community on the work you're doing at a stage where it can influence the direction that you take it in. For example, if you've encountered an issue with your analysis, if you've found something usual or you're looking for opinions or advice, presenting your work, especially in poster-format, is a great way of getting feedback, advice, having discussions and networking with other experts in the field.