Crystal Clear Mars 7
Mutant writes: "BBC News has a story on the latest photos of Mars from Hubble. Because Mars is at one of it's closest positions to Earth, the Hubble has been able to take some beautiful snaps of the red planet, clearly showing "water-ice clouds", dust storms, and more. I can't wait until 2003 when Mars and Earth come closer than they will for the next 300 years."
more links (Score:1)
See also this cnn.com story [cnn.com] about it.
Oh and this slashdot story [slashdot.org] earlier today where I found the links.
High res pictures? (Score:2)
If you click around on that site you can find links to greyscale images representing filtering at different wavelengths, as well as a recent history of Mars's close encounters.
[goes outside to look at Mars in the telescope]
The significance of this? (Score:1)
And hopefully by better understanding conditions on Mars, perhaps through photographs such as this, it will further our efforts to put a man on the red planet. If not, we'll still have some good pictures to show for the effort. Clearly better than anything from the surface of the Earth because of the lack of atmospheric distortion.
But hasn't this sort of thing been done before when we put probes in orbit around Mars and landed them on the surface? Didn't we put the pathfinder on the surface and get excellent images from it, too? I don't see what's so special about getting close proximity to Mars, either, because it only happens every couple of years or so. And Hubble has been up several years so clearly this is not our first opportunity with it.
We can get good photos of Mars anytime we want, so why's this so special? I don't understand. If we want the best pictures, why not send more probes to Mars and put forth a better effort than this? And certainly we know a lot about Mars, far more than about other planets, and thus isn't as big of a deal as it first seems to be.
Ordinarily this wouldn't bother me, but with the Bush administration bent on cutting funding for NASA, it seems completely absurd and wasteful. If given the choice between photographing Mars more or a mission to Pluto, I'd surely choose the latter. The space program used to be about doing new things and going where we had never been before. Now it's just about doing the same things over and over again in the name of supposed progress and research which really is kind of sad. In an age of cutting funding, those growing up today won't know the space program at its height and all the effort put into it. Once it was something for America to be proud of, but it's become a joke because of things like this.
I like pretty pictures, but the space program is about far more than that. And I don't blame the Bush administration for not wanting to pour much-needed funds in the budget into just that: pictures. Don't get me wrong, I like this as much as anyone, but it's not getting the job done. If this is what the space program is about now, maybe running it through private industry where there still is pride is the best option for continuing the exploration of space. This is truly a sad day for me to be saying this.
This is a serious blow to the illuminati. (Score:2)
Oh, and, fifth post.
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Distances (Score:2)
According to "Philip's Guide to Stars and Planets" by Patrick Moore (ISBN 0-540-07235-4), the Earth and Mars will be even closer in 2005 than in 2003:
on Aug 28th 2003 minimum distance will be 56 million km.
on Nov 7th 2005 minimum distance will be 43 million km.
Re:Distances (Score:1)
It'll be closer, but position is also important. What's so special about the alignments of 2001 and 2003 is that Mars is so close at its opposition to the sun. The combination equals the best view in 1000 years.
Re:Distances (Score:1)