Planet Four Talk

Live Chat With Science Team

  • Kitharode by Kitharode moderator

    Hope you've all received notice about the 7th June. Live chat on the blog: http://blog.planetfour.org/

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator in response to Kitharode's comment.

    and don't forget you can post questions for the science team to answer during the live chat.

    Cheers,
    ~Meg

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  • wassock by wassock moderator

    by way of keeping things tidy please post any questions for Friday the 7th in this thread

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  • wassock by wassock moderator

    So here's my six penneth in case no-one else asks: Have a look at the "Crater? - And why are the Spiders not everywhere? thread in the HiRise board http://talk.planetfour.org/#/boards/BPF0000009/discussions/DPF0000ckr .

    There are a series of images of the same region from different years - each shows a characteristic pattern of spider bearing areas surrounded by clean areas like islands of spiders in a sea of nothing which is pretty consistent year on year. Look closer and the sea is full of spiders but they don't appear to have any fans associated with them. If the spiders are caused by fans then there must have been fans there in the past, so why not now?

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  • Kitharode by Kitharode moderator

    I'd like to know more about the Planet Four project 'timetable' if there is one.

    Will the project run for a set number of years or is it open-ended? Does this depend on the lifetime of the MRO and HiRise camera? When do we move 'up north' and for how long? Are the science aims the same for the north pole as they have been for the south? Is the idea for a 'spider classification project' still alive and, if yes, when might this take place?

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  • wassock by wassock moderator

    And in keeping with Kitharodes ask, have you crunched any of the data yet?

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator

    Live chat is today and will be broadcast here

    Cheers,

    ~Meg

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  • Kitharode by Kitharode moderator

    Congratulations to the Science Team and many thanks for your time and effort. It was most informative and, dare I say it, entertaining. Looks like Meg is in the market for a TV presenters job. 😉 Looking forward to next time already. Cheers.

    PS: Catch it on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWWdXyndfUk

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  • JellyMonster by JellyMonster

    I missed it 😦

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator

    Live chat is over but the recorded video is online

    Cheers,

    ~Meg

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator in response to Kitharode's comment.

    Glad you enjoyed it.. Though I think it's best if I stick to my day job 😃.

    ~Meg

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  • p.titchin by p.titchin in response to mschwamb's comment.

    Just to say that I enjoyed the live chat. Thank you all for the hard work. It helps to know how the information is being used. Well done. Pete.

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  • wassock by wassock moderator

    I noted that Candy said that there are no spiders in the North, which sounded like a challenge so......

    HiRise has lots of images labelled as possible spider or araneiform sites but this seems to be because there are fans in them such as this one -

    http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EXTRAS/RDR/ESP/ORB_017400_017499/ESP_017449_2750/ESP_017449_2750_RED.browse.jpg

    But look closer and the fans here look different they are narrower and to my mind more comet/meteor like in appearance, a dark dense head and thinning tail.

    The next one has a whole bunch of multi directional fans but again they appear different to the southern fans. Any takers for there being a difference before we start to wonder why?

    http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EXTRAS/RDR/ESP/ORB_016000_016099/ESP_016095_2655/ESP_016095_2655_RED.abrowse.jpg

    And as Candy says no sign of any spiders

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  • Kitharode by Kitharode moderator in response to wassock's comment.

    If your examples above are representative of 'typical' northern fans, then I'd agree that they are different from the 'typical' southern fans. I like your 'comet-like' analogy.

    There are some significant differences between the northern and southern polar areas so I think it's very likely that fans, blotches, and other features will also be different.

    Apparently, any spider-like channels are carved into the material (ice/dust) which overlays the martian surface and they are erased as the season progresses. Sounds good to me.

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  • wassock by wassock moderator

    Actually there are more Octopi than spiders here. This imgae is taken from the HiRise showing the multidirectional fans.
    Most of them share the same "squid like" morphology seen in the Octopus shown here. But whilst we have no spiders there are some polygonal cracks visible. It may be wishful thinking but the cracks look to me as if they are concentric to the central fan?

    enter image description here

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  • CJ-DPI by CJ-DPI scientist

    We do see the ice crack in the north as well as in the south, even though we don't see spiders (just furrows on dunes - more about that later). When the ice cracks then material from the surface can escape with the escaping gas, in the north just like in the south. The way the ice cracks depends a bit on the terrain below it - we typically see polygonal cracks on large expanses of almost flat ice, like on the gradual windward slopes of the dunes. But sometimes it doesn't - my alltime favorite is this image: ESP_026050_2605.

    For more fun check out youtube "Dry ice moves on Mars" showing some of the experiments that Serina and I did with dry ice on dunes. You might spot Anya too...

    Candy

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  • Kitharode by Kitharode moderator in response to wassock's comment.

    In your image above I'm tempted to suggest that there's a 'bi-polar wind' at play. The impression is stronger in the smaller of the two squids above. I'm seeing a halo of fans from one multidirectional wind around the 'head' of the squid, with a halo round the 'legs' from an opposite multidirectional wind.

    If not, what? An all the way round wind (clockwise or otherwise)? A variety of different wind directions?

    Me being me, I'm going bi-polar. ** 😛 **

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  • wassock by wassock moderator

    Kith there are loads of very similar fans in the area and I guess that they are showing a very active weather system in the region with fluctuating wind directions. What I'm more interested in is why there fans look so different from the Southern ones if the same process is producing them. As they are these ones look more like impact ejecta

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  • Kitharode by Kitharode moderator in response to wassock's comment.

    The differences between the north and south polar regions must play a big part. The elevation is significantly different. Northern winters are relatively short compared to the south. The permanent ice-caps are massively different. I believe there are certain large-scale weather phenomena found only at one pole or the other.

    If there's any truth in the idea that the north is depressed, and the south is bulged, because of a massive impact in the past, there's every chance that the geology is wildly different. Even without that impact it's probable that there are differences.

    In short, I don't have an answer. Good question though.

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  • Neha_pk by Neha_pk

    i missed it too...

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  • Majormattmason by Majormattmason

    Hello, I have just begun to take part in classifying fans and blotches, one question that I have, and have not seen the answer to it is, "how do you deal with a fan, when a large part of it is not in the current page". I came across a huge fan, it looked amazing, and the starting point was well below the image boarder, so I used the fan marking tool but a large part of the fan was out of view. How do you deal with this situation. Thanks

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator in response to Majormattmason's comment.

    If it's an obvious fan or blotch at the the image edge, we do want you to make it. The short answer is to do the best you can with marking it. You can slide the drawn fan or blotch over the image edge if the helps.

    Cheers,

    ~Meg

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator

    To celebrate World Space Week, we're hosting a live chat on October 9th 6pm EDT/3pm PDT/11pm BST - More details here

    Cheers,

    ~Meg

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator

    In case you missed it, the World Space Live Chat video is now uploaded on the blog.

    Cheers,

    ~Meg

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  • Kitharode by Kitharode moderator in response to mschwamb's comment.

    Missed it live, but caught it on the blog. Thanks to all of you for another informative (and entertaining) session.

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  • CherylBrist by CherylBrist

    HI,
    It was interesting to see but I finally just flipped through to see the photo's. That might be a nice option if you just want to see what mars looks like but not classify. It is fun to help but this is the most mundane type of classifying I have ever done in my life. It would be nice if you could utilize the audience out here a bit more. lol

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator in response to CherylBrist's comment.

    You can also go directly the HiRISE website. I think Talk is also a good place to go where you can peruse the images people are classifying without classifying. The main page of talk can be accessed at http://talk.planetfour.org/ or clicking the discuss link on the front page of the main Planet Four website.I do hope you'll continue to classify, it might seem a bit tedious but by marking all the fans and directions we're going to gather a wealth of data to help us understand the martian climate. There's no way to automate this, many of the science team have tried, so your clicks really do matter.

    Cheers,

    ~Meg

    Cheers,
    ~Meg

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  • dfaxon by dfaxon

    How do you display all the hashtags? E.g., I'm interested in the hashtag Alienchimneys (space chimneys) from an image of 2013, but only the "Popular Hashtags" are given.

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  • Kitharode by Kitharode moderator

    Hi dfaxon.

    I'm not sure how you would display all hashtags, or even if that's possible. If it is, then I'm sure Meg ( @mschwamb ) will post the details here when she sees this post. In the meantime, have you tried using the search page (on the top bar)?

    Cheers, Kitharode.

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator in response to dfaxon's comment.

    HI dfaxon,

    You can search hashtags with the search tab

    Cheers,

    ~Meg

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  • dfaxon by dfaxon

    Okay, I give up. How come I can only get key images I've commented on by first going to "Talk" and then using "Profile"?
    If I use Profile from any other screens, I get just a bunch of images, sometimes all mine and other not all mine. But a comment I made on Space Chimneys just shows up when I'm coming from "Talk". Thanks!

    dfaxon

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator in response to dfaxon's comment.

    I'm not sure how you're using the profile, so I can't quite answer your question. Maybe try using the search tab to find what you're looking for?

    Cheers,

    ~Meg

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