Interesting similarity to oil field fires on earth

• by brian_peaston

  Some of the imagery in this project is reminiscent of the oil field fires seen in the gulf war and other local fires as seen from satelites.

  Compare what you have seen on Mars with these other images documented by Nasa: (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/news/40th-top10-kuwait.html)

  Kuwaiti oil field fires: (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/669828main_kuwait-tight.jpg)
  

  Interesting similarities?
  Brian Peaston

  Posted January 27, 2013 11:23 AM

• by brian_peaston

  NASA LandSat Kuwait

  Posted February 2, 2013 11:56 AM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  In some sense there are similarities in that the wind is blowing the smoke particulates in a direction and the wind on Mars is blowing the dust and dirt particulates brought up by the carbon dioxide geysers. But we think that the fans we're seeing are now settled onto the ice sheet surface and aren't in the air.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted February 3, 2013 7:10 PM

• by brian_peaston

  Thanks for your response Meg.

  Thinking on just a little about these similarities... a couple of questions you may be able to help us with.

  1. Do we have any sense of how long the fans on Mars where active for? I wonder how long they were blowing for.
  2. Have any of the Mars images exposed active fans?

  Cheers,
  Brian

  Posted February 12, 2013 10:54 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  The fans are only appear during the spring and summer and disappear when the ice has completely gone away. I know that there have been some HiRES images of fans that show that the fans have changed direction slightly indicating the wind direction may have changed a bit so that must mean the geyser is still producing carbon dioxide and bringing up dust and dirt into the surface.

  You can read more about the fans and their lifetimes here.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted February 13, 2013 2:13 PM