78,000 Mars Global Surveyor Photos Online

angkor writes: "AP is reporting that the Mars Global Surveyor snapped its 100,000th picture of Mars. The Viking orbiters took about 55,000 total. Even better is that over 78,000 of the images are online in the (MOC Gallery). You get to click on a map of Mars to zoom into a specific region. Wow."

Does nobody read the science stories anymore?

[superflex]

Man, and people wonder about the falling marks in the U.S. education report, in another story in the science section that nobody read.

Further proof that Slashdot is a microcosm of society....

oh yeah, fritz post was here... :)

Better get a mirror up

[uslinux.net]

Quick, somebody with hellacious bandwidth and storage capacity mirror it before it gets /.ed!

Re:Better get a mirror up

[VA Software]

Bandwidth yes.

Storage? I couldn't spot any details but a small sample of images were all about 200Kb in 3 or 4 different formats. That would total about 60Gb. A lot (and I'm sure that estimate is low), but smaller than some people's MP3 collections.

Re:Better get a mirror up

[Man of E]

For some reason this didn't make the front page, and you know how little attention the science section get. I doubt /.ing is going to be a problem, frankly.

Why isn't this on the front page?

[32xts]

It's a damn sight more interesting than some crap about filesystems for Red Hat.

Are we alone?

[VA Software]

Where's the face?

Re:Are we alone?

[Anonymous Coward]

here: http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/extended_may20 01/face/ [msss.com]

I can't believe I did that..

Re:Are we alone?

[Man of E]

From image 035A72 taken by Viking orbiter:
LAT C= +40.90 UL= +41.14 UR= +40.28 LL= +41.52 LR= +40.65
LONG C= 9.52 UL= 8.76 UR= 9.28 LL= 9.77 LR= 10.28
The region is called Cydonia, so you should be able to find it in the gallery. Not that the face will be recognizable, since it was a lighting artifact in the first place.

How will we use this information?

[wnknisely]

In stellar astronomy, people have used pictures of the sky for a long time to quickly and easily search for interesting objects like binary stars, galaxies or variables. Many modern celestial maps are just digitized sky images.

I suppose that a set of full scale photo map of Mars taken at different times will allow us to look for any climate or seasonal surface changes - which would be useful in a search for Matian life forms. Given a broad enough time scale, you might also be able to look for evidence of erosion features - but I doubt we'll be able to see such processes on Mars in my lifetime.

If nothing else, it'd be interesting to look closely at the boundary between the northern and southern hemispheric regions.

Re:How will we use this information?

[nicklott]

There was an article on Malin Space Systems in the national geographic a few months back (This Page [nationalgeographic.com] seems to suggest feb 01).

Anyway, basically it was all about how much evidence of water erosion they had found; quite a bit as I remember. Nice pictures too... worth reading if you happen to have the issue lying around

Where are the other 22,000?

[n-baxley]

Where are the other 22,000!? That _must_ be where the alien civilizations exist. We must force the government to admit to the existence of life on Mars, and let us in on the communication they have undoubtedly been having with them for the past 50 years!

This has been satire.

Re:Where are the other 22,000?

[elvum]

Quick! Moderators! Censor this story! signed, The Government.

Where did that face on Mars go?

[Caractacus Potts]

Man, I went through all 78000 pictures, and I still can't find that damn face!