Explore Mars with NASA
Among the crowdsourced scientific programs of the Internet is replenishment. Welcome to the fourth planet. NASA invites everyone to take part in the study of unique seasonal phenomena for Mars, the like of which is not on Earth.
The Martian orbital satellite MRO is equipped with a powerful HiRise camera that provides images with a resolution of 0.3 m / pixel. Since 2006, she has taken many images; these are almost continuous observations over three Martian years. Nobody has seen most of these photos, because a small group of scientists are not able to process such a huge array of photos. Therefore, collective intelligence is called for help.
In the program under consideration, satellite photos relating to the southern polar region were cut into a million small fragments to fit the screen, on which volunteers are invited to mark using a simple fan interface, “spots” and “interesting objects”.
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A little bit about what these objects physically represent, how they arise, change and what they depend on. We'll have to dive a bit into Martian climatology to better understand the meaning of the proposed research.
Annual temperature changes on Mars are determined by two factors - the tilt of the axis and the variable distance from the Sun. Like on Earth, when summer is in the northern hemisphere, in the southern is winter, and vice versa. But in the southern summer Mars is much closer to the Sun than the northern ones. Therefore, winter at the south pole is longer and more severe, and summer is shorter and hotter. This is clearly seen in the diagram, where on the X axis is the Earth day from 0 to 687 (the duration of the Martian year), on the Y axis - the surface temperature at midday from the south pole to the north at the top (traditionally blue cold, red hot).
Therefore, more carbon dioxide freezes in the southern winter and is released more in the summer, and the total planetary atmospheric pressure changes accordingly, as shown by the Viking Launder 1 measurements:
At the south pole, the processes of freezing and release of carbon dioxide in different seasons are accompanied by unique visual phenomena that have attracted the attention of scientists.
In the south of autumn, carbon dioxide begins to freeze and settles on the south polar cap; in the winter, it turns into translucent ice plates.
In the spring the sun begins to warm the dark ground through the translucent ice deeper. The soil heats up and the dry ice lying on it goes into a gaseous state. The pressure grows, the gas tends to pierce the surface ice crust until it finds a weak spot - a carbon dioxide geyser is formed, the jets of which carry dust and sand to the surface. If there is no wind, these particles fall, forming a dark rounded "spot". If the wind blows - it blows the light soil to the side, forming a dark "fan" on the bright ice surface.
In summertime, the CO 2 is completely melted, and the surface becomes homogeneous, until the freezing of carbon dioxide begins again in the autumn of next year.
This annual process creates on the soil a network of canals, which are technically called araneiform, and in practice they are often called "spiders". The form of “spiders” also varies from season to season — from convex to meter-high structures in winter to ditches visible in summer.
For the account of the Martian year, the solar longitude Ls is used, which varies from 0 to 360. The year begins with the equinox - the spring in the northern hemisphere, the autumn in the southern (analogous to March 22). (Ls = 90 - "June 22", Ls = 180 - "September 22", Ls = 270 - "December 22"). The period Ls from 180 to 233 is spring, Ls = 325 is the end of summer in the southern hemisphere.
NASA scientists need help to find and mark “fans” and “spots” in an array of millions of photos to see how they form, develop, disappear and appear again depending on the season, and find out if they occur on the same volume. same place every year and how they change over time. Also, "fans" indicate the direction and speed of the wind at the time of their occurrence, and marking them in the pictures, we help planetary scientists better understand the climate of Mars.
At NASA, they do not run the risk of entrusting computer software to this business, because it is sometimes difficult for even a person to distinguish a “spot” from a “fan”, and the machine cannot cope.
The program also allows you to select "interesting objects", which include everything unusual, which may attract the attention of the researcher: dust whirlwinds and tornadoes, "spiders", young craters, expressive rocks, rock falls, and maybe even alien ships).
In reality, the researcher expects a variety of photographs, many of which require a scrupulous selection of a mass of homogeneous objects - small “spots” or “fans”. Some photos make you wonder where the wind is blowing from, why the surface is bizarrely cracked or how often meteorites fall, and almost all of them are really very beautiful and diverse:
Honestly, when I hit this image I really want a button - “skip this photo”. This is for very big fans of small puzzles, to which I myself do not belong:
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to still assign the parameter such as complexity for analysis to the images and rank the selected complexity by users. It will be interesting to someone to dig with many small details, and to someone it is more interesting large Martian forms.
Particularly interesting images can be discussed with other program participants , the discussion can be viewed as a collection of sights of Mars. Tagging allows you to sort these selected photos by various parameters.
Marks of participants of the program will be compared with the markings made by other volunteers in the same image. Taking the average of these markings, planetary scientists will end up with very reliable maps of "fans" and "spots" on the surface of Mars and the first wind scales on the planet!
A fascinating science with NASA.
Sources:
Pro Seasons on Mars
About the project Fourth Planet
The Martian orbital satellite MRO is equipped with a powerful HiRise camera that provides images with a resolution of 0.3 m / pixel. Since 2006, she has taken many images; these are almost continuous observations over three Martian years. Nobody has seen most of these photos, because a small group of scientists are not able to process such a huge array of photos. Therefore, collective intelligence is called for help.
In the program under consideration, satellite photos relating to the southern polar region were cut into a million small fragments to fit the screen, on which volunteers are invited to mark using a simple fan interface, “spots” and “interesting objects”.
')
A little bit about what these objects physically represent, how they arise, change and what they depend on. We'll have to dive a bit into Martian climatology to better understand the meaning of the proposed research.
Annual temperature changes on Mars are determined by two factors - the tilt of the axis and the variable distance from the Sun. Like on Earth, when summer is in the northern hemisphere, in the southern is winter, and vice versa. But in the southern summer Mars is much closer to the Sun than the northern ones. Therefore, winter at the south pole is longer and more severe, and summer is shorter and hotter. This is clearly seen in the diagram, where on the X axis is the Earth day from 0 to 687 (the duration of the Martian year), on the Y axis - the surface temperature at midday from the south pole to the north at the top (traditionally blue cold, red hot).
Therefore, more carbon dioxide freezes in the southern winter and is released more in the summer, and the total planetary atmospheric pressure changes accordingly, as shown by the Viking Launder 1 measurements:
At the south pole, the processes of freezing and release of carbon dioxide in different seasons are accompanied by unique visual phenomena that have attracted the attention of scientists.
In the south of autumn, carbon dioxide begins to freeze and settles on the south polar cap; in the winter, it turns into translucent ice plates.
In the spring the sun begins to warm the dark ground through the translucent ice deeper. The soil heats up and the dry ice lying on it goes into a gaseous state. The pressure grows, the gas tends to pierce the surface ice crust until it finds a weak spot - a carbon dioxide geyser is formed, the jets of which carry dust and sand to the surface. If there is no wind, these particles fall, forming a dark rounded "spot". If the wind blows - it blows the light soil to the side, forming a dark "fan" on the bright ice surface.
In summertime, the CO 2 is completely melted, and the surface becomes homogeneous, until the freezing of carbon dioxide begins again in the autumn of next year.
This annual process creates on the soil a network of canals, which are technically called araneiform, and in practice they are often called "spiders". The form of “spiders” also varies from season to season — from convex to meter-high structures in winter to ditches visible in summer.
For the account of the Martian year, the solar longitude Ls is used, which varies from 0 to 360. The year begins with the equinox - the spring in the northern hemisphere, the autumn in the southern (analogous to March 22). (Ls = 90 - "June 22", Ls = 180 - "September 22", Ls = 270 - "December 22"). The period Ls from 180 to 233 is spring, Ls = 325 is the end of summer in the southern hemisphere.
NASA scientists need help to find and mark “fans” and “spots” in an array of millions of photos to see how they form, develop, disappear and appear again depending on the season, and find out if they occur on the same volume. same place every year and how they change over time. Also, "fans" indicate the direction and speed of the wind at the time of their occurrence, and marking them in the pictures, we help planetary scientists better understand the climate of Mars.
At NASA, they do not run the risk of entrusting computer software to this business, because it is sometimes difficult for even a person to distinguish a “spot” from a “fan”, and the machine cannot cope.
The program also allows you to select "interesting objects", which include everything unusual, which may attract the attention of the researcher: dust whirlwinds and tornadoes, "spiders", young craters, expressive rocks, rock falls, and maybe even alien ships).
In reality, the researcher expects a variety of photographs, many of which require a scrupulous selection of a mass of homogeneous objects - small “spots” or “fans”. Some photos make you wonder where the wind is blowing from, why the surface is bizarrely cracked or how often meteorites fall, and almost all of them are really very beautiful and diverse:
Honestly, when I hit this image I really want a button - “skip this photo”. This is for very big fans of small puzzles, to which I myself do not belong:
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to still assign the parameter such as complexity for analysis to the images and rank the selected complexity by users. It will be interesting to someone to dig with many small details, and to someone it is more interesting large Martian forms.
Particularly interesting images can be discussed with other program participants , the discussion can be viewed as a collection of sights of Mars. Tagging allows you to sort these selected photos by various parameters.
Marks of participants of the program will be compared with the markings made by other volunteers in the same image. Taking the average of these markings, planetary scientists will end up with very reliable maps of "fans" and "spots" on the surface of Mars and the first wind scales on the planet!
A fascinating science with NASA.
Sources:
Pro Seasons on Mars
About the project Fourth Planet
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/165405/
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