Inca City, Ithaca, Manhattan: Which part of the Martian Arctic do you want to see first?

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  Which bit of the Martian Arctic do you want to see first? As spring comes to this strangest of Martian landscapes, and as Planet Four participants wait to see a new season on fans appear, we’re teaming up with the HiRISE camera team to let you choose what to see first.

  Vote for your favorite Planet Four region today at http://www.planetfour.org/vote/ . Voting will be open from August 1, 2014 9am GMT - September 1, 2014 9am GMT.

  Happy voting!

  ~Meg

  Posted August 1, 2014 10:47 AM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  What region did you vote for and why? I look forward to hearing your thoughts on which region (Inca City, Ithaca, or Manhattan) is your favorite spot on the Red Planet.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted August 4, 2014 11:35 AM

• by Kitharode moderator

  My vote went to Inca City. I'm intrigued by the variety of 'spiders' that can be seen inside some of the 'zones' in the area. It's also a region that might show boulder movements over time.

  Posted August 4, 2014 4:35 PM

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

  I'm afraid I have 2, my boulder interest means I want to see any impact sights on the ice cap, and my other driving passion is the exposed layers in the polar layered deposits, and of course the exposed terraces in the chasmae. small order eh? !! 😃 ~ pete
  p.s. with regard to Kith's comment, I've been looking for boulder movements in Inca City all year,on every image I can get,, and suspect I don't have the lifespan to see much, though they undoubtably are occurring, and have seen one great image of a boulder track so of the choice given in the survey, I voted Inca City as well.~ Pete

  Posted August 4, 2014 7:32 PM

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

  I've been thinking about the title of this discussion, where it mentions 'Martian Arctic'. Are we not in the martian 'Antarctic' when we are at the south pole of the planet?

  😉

  Posted August 5, 2014 2:51 PM

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

  Ha-ha Kith- right and to the point as ever! 😃 . If my classics hold up, "Arcticos" was the ancient greek for the Great Bear constellation. From Greece, that was very much in the north sky, and so as the latin took over, it came to mean 'the north'. An-tarctic means the opposite. My challenge, from Mars, I suppose the constellations look pretty much the same .? Can we determine a Martian viewed constellation that will be in the north so we can have a distinctive Martian name for the north and south poles? If Draco was more obvious, we could have ended up with the draconian and andraconian poles! -or, as we are mostly looking at the 'south pole', perhaps give that the honour of the primary polar name - perhaps "Octansica" and then the north pole could be "anoctansica" 😃 ~Pete

  Posted August 5, 2014 8:07 PM

• by Kitharode moderator in response to p.titchin's comment.

  Excellent post Pete. Η γνώση σας της ελληνικής είναι πολύ καλή. 😉

  You're right about the martian view of constellations being the same as the view from Earth because, at the moment, the tilt of the poles of each planet are virtually the same. That being the case, I'd suggest that the next most easily recognisable constellation after Ursa Major (the Plough / Great Bear) would be the 'W' shape of Cassiopeia which sits directly opposite the Great Bear, with the pole star (Polaris) between them.

  This would give us 'Cassiopic' for the north pole, with 'Antcassiopic' for the south. To be honest, I like Arctic/Antarctic best. 😃

  Posted August 6, 2014 4:01 PM

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

  I,m afraid I don't know how to change my keyboard, so :-.Makari na itan alitheia,alla sas efcharisto poly. Hope the 'transliteration' makes sense! I'm struggling! I think as we are on Mars, I shall have to default to Latin. Best get back to classifying. 😃

  Posted August 6, 2014 9:05 PM

• by Kitharode moderator in response to p.titchin's comment.

  I cheated. 😦 Used Google translate and then 'copy and paste' to insert the Greek. Ho ho ho...

  Posted August 7, 2014 1:49 PM

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

  thrasys acrhreios I did wonder Kith, as I thought 'be very good' was a bit west country! My struggles involved looking for my Greek dictionary to check on my reply! The translation tended to 'hellenic' as an adjective, rather than Greek as a language, but I had 2 years of ancient Greek, then 4 of new testament Greek, all now nearly a half century ago. Modern Greek is all Greek to me. 😃

  Posted August 7, 2014 7:51 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  The Arctic reference was added by Chris Lintott, PI of the Zooniverse and Galaxy Zoo, when I asked him to copy edit the text for me and give feedback. I hadn't though much about it. Arctic seemed okay to me, but perhaps it should be the Antarctic? I'm not sure.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted August 12, 2014 4:26 AM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  Don't forget today is the last full day to vote for your favorite region. Vote often!

  http://demo.zooniverse.org/planet-four-vote/

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted September 1, 2014 3:43 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  And the winner is.... Inca City!

  Thanks to all who voted.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted September 2, 2014 11:53 AM

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

  Hi Kith. Ever since this chat thread, it has bugged me that I couldn't write in Greek on my laptop. Recently, I set my mind to the problem after experiencing the same frustrations with French accents when writing to French friends. My keyboard does not have a right side numeric pad, and so the code numbers used normally do not work. I have solved the problem, and can now switch between any foreign language keyboard at whim with the press of alt/shift!. Il est donc très simple. Tous les problèmes sont décédé. The greek symbols are useful if I come across equations, Ετσι τωρα ειμαι χαρουμενος ! 😃 ~Pete

  Posted October 7, 2014 12:21 PM

• by Kitharode moderator in response to p.titchin's comment.

  I use Google Translate, then copy and paste. Job done. 😃 How does the alt/shift thingy work? It doesn't seem to change anything on my laptop.

  Posted October 7, 2014 3:27 PM

• by p.titchin

  This is only for laptop keyboards without the rt side numeric pad, and not working through ' windows' When we buy laptops here they usually are default set for the GB 'qwerty' keyboard. If you access 'settings' and go to 'keyboard settings' and 'change language and input', it should state that it is on GB, click on the 'add' and it should offer you a choice of languages. Scroll down and select the language, it will then offer a choice of input. Select 'keyboard, and 'done' et voilà! You can add as many as you like. Click and highlight the GB line, and exit. Your keyboard will be normal 'qwerty', when you want a different keyboard, scroll through by pressing alt/shift. A little square will show with each press to indicate the language you have moved to.With 'windows you have to use the alt codes eg " à " is 'alt 0224' with the number lock 'on'and if you don't have a rt numeric pad, you have to 'superimpose it' on the right side of the keyboard with the 'fn' button. All very complicated and slow. Cutting and pasting is easier, but the changed keyboard system is terrific, and you dont have to go into google translate. ~Pete

  Posted October 7, 2014 3:52 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  A quick update for those of you reading this on Talk: The first Inca City observations have been taken by HiIRSE and are on the ground. They're soon to be processed for public release. That could take several weeks,. We'll let everyone know when the images are officially public and accessible on the web.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted October 8, 2014 1:51 AM

• by Kitharode moderator

  Meg: Thanks for the update. The new images might well be useful for 'comparative studies' with the older ones.

  Pete: It does sound a bit complicated and probably beyond what I need. At the same time it might well be useful to others, so thanks for taking the trouble to post it.

  ** 😃 **

  Posted October 8, 2014 9:00 PM

• by DZM admin

  Always nice to hear that there's new data on the way for one of our most popular Zooniverse projects! 😃

  Posted October 10, 2014 4:40 PM

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

  There is definitely new data on its way to the site. We're working on getting Season 4 Inca City observations ready to be shown in the classification interface, but these observations I'm referring to are actually Season 5 Inca City (brand new hot off the presses images from the monitoring campaign going on right now). The Season 5 images are a sneek peak of the current conditions on the South Pole as part of public vote campaign. I think we're planning on getting these released images into the site for classification too, though the majority of the Season 5 observations will have to wait for the public data release on the Planetary Data System.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted October 10, 2014 5:05 PM

• by DZM admin

  Good news on both accounts, then! Thanks for the information!

  Posted October 10, 2014 8:09 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  Hiya,

  The science team just got to see a very small preview of what's down and going to be publicly released by the HiRISE team. I think you're going to like what you see. Watch the blog and this space for more updates.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted October 14, 2014 3:01 AM

• by wassock moderator

  Just been checking out HiRise - we have images taken in August/September this year - "The Heart" is there and showing Blue bits this time around (24/08/2014) http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_037859_0980

  

  Posted October 16, 2014 4:25 PM

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

  That's a gorgeous image. I get the impression that the blue fan area covers thin dendritic spider channels, with the surrounding non-fan areas having wide-channel buggy bits (?)

  Might this indicate a maximum channel width for fan formation?

  Posted October 16, 2014 4:36 PM

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

  This is the same area as I've looked at in the "Heart of the Matter" Thread

  http://talk.planetfour.org/#/boards/BPF0000009/discussions/DPF0000fko

  These 'islands' have appeared in the same places, with the same shape in each of the years we have images for. Your impression is correct the fans form on islands of well defined spiders amidst a sea of indistinct 'buggy' ones

  Posted October 16, 2014 4:41 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  Apparently we can't keep anything from you guys 😃. There's some more to come and then we'll announce the images are publicly released still waiting a few to come out. on the HiRISE website. Then we'll get a blog post up announcing the images (very cool there's more than one being released) from the public vote are out for all to see.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted October 16, 2014 9:07 PM

• by wassock moderator

  Sorry Meg, didnt realise they were still 'secret' any idea why there seems to be so much blue around this year compared with the last couple of seasons?

  Posted October 18, 2014 8:56 AM

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

  I was just teasing a bit. I've tweeted them from the Planet Four twitter account and posted on the facbook account. You're the first to realize the images are out. We're just waiting to formally announce when all of the images are out and we've got a blog post ready. I didn't see much blue in the comparison subframes I got sent (which will get posted on the blog) so I'm not sure. I think that's one of the reasons why there's the monitoring campaign so that we can try and figure that out by comparing to the previous seasons.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted October 18, 2014 11:42 AM

• by wassock moderator

  IT's a limited sample that I've looked but turned up blue in at least a couple or 3 places, out of not many, so extrapolated a bit maybe? 😃

  Posted October 18, 2014 1:23 PM

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

  Not sure. Apparently the frost/blue and how it forms it still an not fully closed question. Comparing the 5 Mars years of observations will hopefully shed some light on this.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted October 19, 2014 2:45 AM

• by wassock moderator

  I think about a third of the ones put up so far are showing some blueness - not the really bright blue but it's there to varying degrees - Have half a dozen or so different images ready to put up, but will hang on till you release them publicly.

  Posted October 19, 2014 12:11 PM

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

  A sneak peek - Here's the first image released as part of the public vote http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_037626_0985

  Cheers ,

  ~Meg

  Posted October 28, 2014 10:50 AM

• by wassock moderator

  Theres some blue in there, very early season and already a few bidirectional fans

  Posted October 28, 2014 11:34 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  Hi,

  The HiRISE team released 5 images from Inca City due to our public vote. We'll have a blog post up hopefully in the next week, but in the meantime I thought I'd share. Enjoy!

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted November 14, 2014 4:00 AM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  All 5 images have been released and we have a blog post from PI Candy Hansen describing the observations and what her take is on what we're seeing in the images.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted November 18, 2014 10:27 AM

• by wassock moderator

  Meg do you know if the camera settings are the same for all 6 images? if so what's causing the increase in red in the 5th?

  The blue halos in the 5th image seem to have formed ontop of the dark fan/blotchs in the earlier images, so if it is due to CO2 then it's a frosting effect?

  

  Posted November 18, 2014 7:57 PM

• by DZM admin

  Interesting find, and good question! I also very much like how you've shown the alignment of the surface features.

  Posted November 18, 2014 9:14 PM

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

  Hi Darren,

  The image is from the blog 😃. Candy Hansen (the Planet Four PI) made the figure.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted November 18, 2014 10:37 PM

• by DZM admin in response to mschwamb's comment.

  Well, I like how Candy made the figure, then! 😃

  I'm still curious about the significant increase in redness between 4 and 5, as @wassock mentioned.

  Posted November 19, 2014 7:20 PM

• by CJ-DPI scientist

  Hi, The last image in the series is definitely redder, but it is not due to a change in camera settings. Rather, we do color stretches on each image based on the image itself, rather than relative to a standard. So changes in illumination (the sun is getting higher), scattered light in the atmosphere (a lot of dust right now), frost on the ground, etc. will cause changes in color, and we don't attempt to compensate for any of those changes.
  Candy

  Posted November 20, 2014 6:15 PM