Tag Archives: Curiosity

How to get to Mars in 1 minute and 7 seconds

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Mars photographed with the C2 coronagraph on SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) earlier this morning. SOHO uses a disk to block the sun’s light so astronomers can study its atmosphere called the corona. Mars appears next to the sun only because it’s in the same line of sight. The planet’s actually in the distant background. Credit: NASA/ESA

On April 17 the Red Planet and Earth will line up on opposite sides of the sun, an event called solar conjunction. Other than not being able to see Mars because it’s hidden in the solar glare, the event has one real consequence for earthlings. We’ll explore that in a minute. Let’s just say that since the two planets now sit at opposite ends of the seesaw, Mars is about as far away as it gets, winking at Earth across a distance of 225.7 million miles. Compare that to 35 million when we’re closest.

That’s OUT THERE. Even light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, takes 20 minutes to cross the gulf separating Earth from Mars. That means a 40 minute round trip for radio communications between the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers and mission control.

Screen grab from the “How Far is it to Mars?” site that give you a taste for how far the moon and Mars are from Earth. Click to go there. Credit: David Paliwoda and Jesse Williams

How would you like to get a feel for that distance? Understanding that time is precious, we’ll go easy on you by making the journey when Mars is closest to Earth. Normally it would take about 150 days to travel to the Red Planet using current technology. We’ll arrive quicker by accelerating to 3 times the speed of light. Even at that pace, you might be surprised how long it takes to arrive. Click HERE or on the image above to take the free journey. Bon voyage!

Curiosity drilled two holes in the “John Klein” rock in early February and gathered the powdered tailings to analyze its composition. The holes are each 2/3″ or 16mm across. On March 26, the rover used its powerful ChemCam laser to repeatedly zap the drilled powder, creating a row of tiny pits. The vaporized rock emitted light that was analyzed by Curiosity to determine its makeup. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Let’s return to the consequences of a Mars solar conjunction. As described in this earlier blog, Mars’ close alignment with the sun does affect our ability to communicate with the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers. Signals sent from Earth pass directly along the sun’s line of sight en route to Mars where they could be corrupted by solar radiation storms and electrified particles in the sun’s corona.

Interesting white rocks scattered about where Curiosity is stationed in Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. Notice how rounded some of the other pebbles are – possibly from water erosion. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It’s no big deal if bits of information go missing in a transmission from Curiosity, but if a bad command were sent from Earth, it might cause the robot to seize up or do damage to itself. To avoid potential problems, NASA has suspended communications for the remainder of April. Each day, Curiosity sends daily beeps to Earth telling mission control “I’m still here.”

Cool “aerial” view of Mt. Sharp inside Gale Crater (where Curiosity landed) taken by the orbiting Mars Odyssey satellite. The layering in the mountain at upper left may have been made when sediments were deposited by flowing waters. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL/ASU

Mars gigapixel panorama will blow your socks off

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A screen grab from the new Mars Curiosity panorama shows Mt. Sharp rising to a peak inside Gale Crater. Click image to explore the interactive scene. Credit: NASA-JPL / Andrew Bodrov

Busy cooking this Easter Sunday?  If you haven’t seen the new gigapixel panorama of the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater, I strongly encourage to put down the ham, click the photo and begin your journey. The best part is that you don’t just look at it – you EXPLORE it with the touch of your mouse. This thing’s totally interactive. Select any part of the image and press the mouse button, then drag and travel. Scrolling zooms the view in and out. The level of detail is beyond belief. Once you start looking around, you might get stuck at the computer for a while.

Andrew Bodrov

Andrew Bodrov, the creator of the panorama, has been stitching pictures together for over 12 years. Although he’s mostly worked with earthly vistas, he doesn’t limit himself to one planet. Bodrov’s enjoys stitching NASA images to create immersive virtual reality panoramas of Mars including this earlier one of Curiosity’s landing site.

Panning around his panoramas is the closest we’ll get – for the time being – of standing on Mars ourselves.

Curiosity is a photojournalist’s dream with 17 different cameras. Left and right mastcam photos were used for the panorama. The one on the left uses a telephoto lens (100mm); the right camera is a 34mm wide angle. Bodrov’s panorama contains a mix of both but mostly telephoto images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This latest panorama was compiled from 407 pictures taken over 13 days on Mars (Mars solar days 136-149) with Curiosity’s high-resolution mast cameras or mastcams. The two 2-megapixel cameras are mounted on a mast 7 feet above the ground and take both color images and video.

Earlier panorama of Curiosity at its landing site. Click to visit. Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech / Andrew Bodrov

Altogether the image contains 4 billion pixels or picture elements, giving it a sweep and resolution that will, well, blow you over. Now that the Easter ham’s in the oven, sit down for a few minutes and enjoy a well-deserved Mars vacation

Concealed planets exposed plus it’s spring break on Mars

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The sun and its pack of planets photographed earlier today by the coronagraph aboard the SOHO observatory. The sun (white circle) is blocked by an opaque disk so astronomers can study the streaky solar atmosphere called the corona. Credit: NASA / ESA

Half the planets have gone into hiding. Mercury is too low in the dawn sky for northern hemisphere skywatchers, and Mars, Venus and Uranus are gathered around the sun concealed by its glare. Only Jupiter and Saturn remain available for our viewing pleasure.

Still, it’s hard to keep planets hidden away when you’ve got the eyes of the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on your side. SOHO orbits around a stable region of space called the L1 Langrangian point where the gravity of Earth balances that of the sun.

SOHO orbits about a million miles ahead of Earth in line with the sun in a small “halo orbit” around the L1 Lagrangian point. From this vantage point it keeps the sun and Earth in view 24/7. Credit: Office of Naval Research

From this prime observing spot, scientists use SOHO’s cameras to study the sun in many wavelengths or colors of light. Special devices called coronagraphs block the overly-bright solar disk with a metal stop to allow viewing of the sun’s outer atmosphere or corona. They also show other objects in the field of view like comets and the current gang of planets – Uranus, Venus and Mars.

Since the planets are very near one another, lots of interesting lineups will happen in the coming days. Venus reaches superior conjunction on March 28 (tomorrow) when it lines up on the opposite side of the sun from Earth. Six hours later it’s only one degree (two full moon diameters) below Uranus. An hour after, Uranus is in conjunction with the sun. Then on April 6-7 Venus and Mars will be in conjunction just half a degree apart. Is this beginning to sound like a barn dance?

One thing to remember about conjunctions – the planets involved are not physically close; they only appear to be because we see them in the same line of sight. If you’d like to watch all these interesting encounters, check out SOHO’s latest coronagraph image.

Approximately every 26 months, Mars passes almost directly behind the sun from Earth’s perspective. During this time, NASA will halt communications with the two rovers. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

For us, Mars’ proximity to the sun is interesting but inconsequential. Not so for the Curiosity mission. On April 17 the planet is in conjunction on the opposite side of the sun from Earth. From our perspective, Mars will appear extremely close to the sun’s brilliant disk. Radiation from solar flares and high-speed subatomic particles in the sun’s corona can disrupt radio transmissions between the two planets during close alignments like this one. To prevent compromised radio commands from reaching either Curiosity or the older Opportunity rover, mission controllers will temporarily suspend transmissions from April 9 to 26.

Wide angle view of Yellowknife Bay taken by one of Curiosity’s hazard avoidance cameras on March 27, 2013. The rover recently resumed science operations after recovery from a computer glitch. Credit: NASA/ JPL

Communications from Mars to Earth will also be reduced. To stay in touch, Curiosity will send daily beeps to Earth. Meanwhile both rovers and orbiting Mars satellites will continue science operations. Data gathered will be stored and then beamed to Earth in early May. The rovers’ spring break will be tame by earthly standards; both will stay put during the interval to prevent any shenanigans.

The bright star Sirius and planet Jupiter perform a balancing act on either side of Orion’s Belt this month and next. This may shows the sky facing southwest around 8:30 p.m. in late March.  Maps created with Stellarium

Did I mention there are still two great planets out at night? Jupiter stands high in the west-southwest at nightfall. It’s the brightest object in that direction. Saturn comes up later around 11 o’clock in the southeast about one extended fist to the lower right of Spica. The full moon will be near Spica tonight and Saturn on Thursday night. Much to see for all!

The full moon will swing by both Spica (tonight) and the planet Saturn tomorrow night. This map shows the sky facing southeast around 11:30 p.m.

Curiosity finds Mars has the right stuff for life

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Curiosity drilled into Sheepbed rock layer, once part of an ancient stream bed on Mars, and identified carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, hydrogen, phosphorus and oxygen – some of the key chemical ingredients for life. Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech

Take a look at that rock face. It measures about 8 inches (20 cm) across and was probably deposited as sediment in a Martian stream millions of years ago. Look more closely and you’ll spot veins filled with a white material. Scientists think the rock was later fractured. Mineral-laden waters flowed through the cracks, depositing their burden and filling the cracks.

Sample of drilled rock in Curiosity’s scoop. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Last month the Curiosity rover extended its robotic arm and drilled into a fine-grained, sedimentary rock layer called Sheepbed in Mars’ Gale Crater. A sample of the powder was delivered to the rover’s onboard chem lab, analyzed and found to contain very familiar-sounding elements -  a soup of carbon, sulfur, phosphorus, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Living forms love and need them all to thrive. Why are these elements so important? I’m glad you asked:

* Sulfur – certain kinds of bacteria thrive by breaking down sulfur compounds to produce their “food”. Sulfur is also found in amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins. You, me and everything alive are built from proteins.

* Phosphorus – an important component of our DNA and RNA and also an essential element in a chemical compound called ATP. ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is used to transfer energy inside the cell and metabolize nutrients to create energy.

* Nitrogen – another essential ingredient of amino acids. Bacteria living in the roots of plants take atmospheric nitrogen and convert it into a form plants can use so they can thrive. Animals and humans get their nitrogen in turn from plants or from other animals that eat plants.

Human red blood cells. Cells transport energy and metabolize nutrients using water (hydrogen and oxygen), oxygen and phosphorus among other elements.

* Carbon – is the basis for all organic life as we know it. It’s an essential part of our DNA and RNA. Carbon has the unique ability among atoms to bond to almost any molecule. We get the carbon we need through plants (or other plant-eating animals) which take carbon dioxide in the air and convert it into the carbon molecule called “glucose” (food).

* Hydrogen – hydrogen happily latches on to oxygen to form water (H2O) which is another life essential.

* Oxygen – a must-have for respiration. It “oxidizes” or “burns” foods to create energy. Most life forms on Earth require it to live.

The rock also contained clays and sulfates, evidence that the materials that it was originally deposited by running water, perhaps a stream, and later solidified into rock. Better yet, the water was neither acidic nor alkaline but “neutral” much like freshwater on Earth. Indeed you could have slaked your thirst with it had you been around then.

False-color map of Curiosity’s landing site in Gale Crater. The probe landed near an alluvial fan deposited by water flowing downhill from the crater’s rim. Curiosity drilled into rock in the “John Klein” outcrop in the Sheepbed rock layer. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Taken together, these signs point to a wetter, warmer Mars in the distant past, and a planet that could have supported life. Today it’s a cold, dry desert with air less than 1% as thick as Earth’s and toasted by toxic ultraviolet light from the sun.

While no complex organic molecules like amino acids, fats and sugars have been found so far by the roving robot, all the basic ingredients are there in Gale Crater to create them.

Mission control to Curiosity rover: Drill, baby, drill!

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Look closely at this photo of the “Sheepbed” locality, taken by Curiosity rover, and you’ll see well-defined veins filled with whitish minerals believed to be calcium sulfate. These veins form when water circulates through fractures, depositing minerals along the sides of the fracture, to form a vein. Scale at top. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity rover has done it again – found even more evidence for soaking, seeping, swirling waters on Mars. We’ve seen earlier images of water-rolled pebbles and sedimentary outcrops, but this week NASA shared a new set of photos from the Yellowknife Bay site showing alternating, thin layers of rock that could only have formed in a stream bed. Other pictures show mineral veins deposited by flowing water in rock fractures. What’s remarkable it how similar these rocks look to their counterparts on Earth.

This set of images shows the similarity of sulfate-rich veins seen on Mars by Curiosity to sulfate-rich veins seen on Earth. The view on the left is a mosaic of two shots from the remote micro-imager on the ChemCam instrument. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Scientists have been studying Yellowknife through Curiosity’s eyes looking for an ideal spot to test the rover’s drill for the first time. If engineers deem it safe, the rover will inch up to “John Klein”, a flat-lying expanse of bedrock laced with pale mineral veins, and fire up its drill sometime in the next few days. The location is named after former Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager John W. Klein who died in 2011.

This picture shows inclined layering known as cross-bedding in an outcrop called “Shaler”. Currents mold the sediments into small underwater dunes that migrate downstream. When exposed in cross-section, evidence of this migration is preserved as tilted layers or strata. The bottom of the large outcrop is about 3 feet across. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The first powdered rock samples will be used to scrub the drill clean of any earthly contamination. Later samples will be fed into Curiosity’s miniature chem lab to analyze the rock’s mineral and chemical makeup. Thanks to a zap from the rover’s ChemCam laser, we already know one of the veins contains high levels of calcium, sulfur and hydrogen, likely from the mineral calcium sulfate, better known as gypsum.

Not only has the robot returned photos of cross-bedded outcrops (layers of sediments deposited by rivers) and mineral veins, but using the closeup camera, scientists have found grains of sandstone the size of “peppercorns” in other rock formations nearby.

The “John Klein” site in Yellowknife Bay, a broad depression in Gale Crater on Mars. Sometime in the next few days, the rover will use its drill to gather a rock sample. The drill can bore as deep as two inches into rock. Click for large, annotated photo. Credit:

“Still others are siltstone, with grains finer than powdered sugar. These differ significantly from pebbly conglomerate rocks in the landing area,” according to the NASA release. Siltstones were originally layers of mud that were later compressed into rock by geological forces.

All these signs point to a much wetter past on the Red Planet. Pouring over the new pictures, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision the floor of Gale Crater crossed by streams and dotted with small lakes. For water to be stable on the surface of Mars long enough to build the rocks we’re now finding, the planet must have had a much thicker atmosphere and warmer temperatures in the past. A denser atmosphere provides pressure needed to prevent water from boiling away.

Curiosity photographed a transparent mineral grain measuring a couple millimeters across embedded in coarse-grained sandstone. Some Internet users have dubbed it “the Mars Flower”. Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech

Transport yourself to a remote time when the brown Martian sky was blue and the air almost humid. At your feet a stream swirls along, carrying away tiny pebbles and grains of sand. While oxygen may only have been present in trace amounts in the ancient Martian air, you could listen to the sound of running water and maybe even hear one of Mars’ many volcanoes rumbling in the distance. Tell me this wasn’t a world ripe for microscopic life.

Thin crescent moons and space station swings, these are a few of my favorite things

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The crescent moon greets sky watchers tonight in the western sky during twilight. Binoculars will show Mars very low above the horizon about an hour after sunset. Created with Stellarium

Two of our favorite sky objects are back. A fingernail crescent moon will scratch the sky at dusk and the space station begins another series of swing-bys  at  dawn.

Watch for the moon in the southwest during evening twilight. If you’re game for a challenge, use binoculars to find dim Mars about 7 degrees directly below the moon. Think of Curiosity up there poking around the rocks of Gale Crater in Yellowknife Bay. Can you believe it’s been there for 161 days already?

This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) shows the patch of rock cleaned by the first use of the rover’s Dust Removal Tool (DRT) on Jan. 6, 2013. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Last week the rover used its motorized, wire-bristle brush for the first time to dust off a rock in preparation for close-up inspection by the hand-lens imager and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS). The APXS analyzes the elements that compose the rock by bombarding it with alpha particles (helium atoms) and X-rays and measuring what scatters back. Each element gives off its own distinctive energy fingerprint.

Expedition 34 crew members photographed an extensive blanket of stratocumulus clouds as they flew over the northwestern Pacific Ocean on Jan. 4, 2013. The cloud pattern is typical for this part of the world. The low clouds carry cold air over a warmer sea. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA

Morning sky watchers again have the pleasure of tracking the International Space Station (ISS), now beginning a fresh series of passes before sunrise. Winter mornings make watching the space station easy compared to summer. With the sun rising so late, you can look for the station when you step out to pick up the paper or walk the dog. No getting up at 4 or 5 a.m. like you did during the summer months with its early sunrises and even earlier twilights.

The times below are for the Duluth, Minn. region. Check out times for your town at Spaceweather’s Satellite Flybys page or log in to Heavens-Above, where you can print out cool maps of the space station’s path in the sky. Look for the ISS to first appear in the west and travel east; a typical pass takes about 5 minutes.  It looks like a brilliant, steady yellow star on the move.

* Tomorrow Jan. 14 beginning at 6:55 a.m. High pass across the northern sky. Brilliant at magnitude -3.2
* Tues. Jan. 15 at 6:07 a.m. when it suddenly leaves Earth’s shadow in the western sky in Leo and travels across the top of the sky headed east. Brightest pass of the week at mag. -3.4
* Weds. Jan. 16 at 6:51 a.m. Nice pass across the northern sky
* Thurs. Jan. 17 at 6:03 a.m. Appears  suddenly out of Earth’s shadow halfway up in the northwestern sky moving east.
* Fri. Jan. 18 at 6:48 a.m. Full pass across the northern sky
* Sat. Jan. 19 at 6 a.m. First appears out of Earth’s shadow near the North Star moving east.

Closeup of the large sunspot region 1654 taken at 9 a.m. CST this morning Jan. 13, 2013 by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Solar storms or flares occur when powerful magnetic energy stored in the spots is explosively released.  Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA

The sun’s been looking pretty hot this past week. Lots of flares, including a few rated as moderately powerful M-class storms, have been popping off in the large sunspot group 1654. I see today that the Kp index, an indicator of magnetic activity around the Earth, is starting to climb again – just a little. The space weather forecast doesn’t predict any auroras minor or major in the next three days, but that could change if 1654 continues firing off flares as it rotates to face the Earth more directly.

A comet tale plus pummeling asteroids leave carbon stains on Vesta

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Comet C/2012K5 passes near the bright star cluster M36 in the constellation Auriga the Charioteer last night. The comet is fading now but still visible in binoculars from a dark sky. Details: 200mm lens at f/2.8, ISO 800 and 2-minute exp. Photo: Bob King

Last night I attached my camera to a battery-operated mount designed to track the stars. What a comedy. Polar alignment kept slipping, the camera-lens weight was too much for the mount and focusing the telephoto lens proved tedious. All I wanted was a single picture of comet C/2012 K5. In the end, I got a lot of exercise hopping back and forth making adjustments …  and a somewhat serviceable image.

Up around 6 a.m. this weekend? Look south and you’ll see the last quarter moon pass the bright star Spica in Virgo Saturday and then Saturn on Sunday. Created with Stellarium

The comet had faded a bit but was still a fuzzy blotch in binoculars and showed an obvious northeastward-pointing tail at low magnification through the telescope. Although the tail color was too subtle to be seen with the eye, a time exposure reveals the yellow tint caused by sunlight reflecting off dust particles. Heat from the sun vaporizes comet ice, releasing embedded rocks and dust into the tail behind the comet’s head.

Scene from Yellowknife Bay on Mars photographed today Jan. 4, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech with color added by Bob King

Not much news has been reported from the Curiosity rover of late. NASA mission specialists are probably happy they can work in peace out of the media spotlight. Pictures keep pouring in just the same. You can view the most recent set of raw images HERE.

The rover’s been exploring a shallow basin called Yellowknife Bay. It’s one bleak-looking landscape that begs for the introduction of a few saguaro cacti. After finishing up exploration of the bay, scientist plans to spend most of 2013 piloting the rover toward the mission’s primary science destination – the 3-mile-high layered mound at center of Gale Crater center named Mt. Sharp. There the robot will study and sample water-rich clays deposited long ago when Mars was a wetter world.

Most of the dark, carbonaceous material on Vesta can be found on the rims of smaller craters (left) or scattered in their surroundings (right). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

A recent paper published in the November-December issue of the journal
Icarus describes the dark splotches of carbon-containing materials exposed along the rims of small craters as well as along the edges of the huge impact craters Rheasilvia and Venenaeia on the asteroid Vesta.

NASA’s Dawn mission to Vesta last year took thousands of photos, some of which show dark patches of carbonaceous (car-bon-NAY-shuss) material that matches the dark, carbon-rich mineral fragments found in Vesta meteorites here on Earth.

Dark materials streak Vesta’s Cornelia crater in this three-dimensional image from Dawn. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

“The dark material was most probably delivered during the formation of the older Veneneia basin (large impact crater in Vesta’s southern hemisphere) when a slow impacting asteroid collided with Vesta. Dark material from this two to three billion year old basin was covered up by the impact that Dark material from this two to three billion year old basin was covered up by the impact that subsequently created the Rheasilvia basin,” according to Lucille Le Corre and Vishnu Reddy, lead authors of the study.

In this slice of a Howardite meteorite found in the Sahara Desert, some of the small, dark chips are carbon-rich rocks from an asteroid that collided with Vesta long ago. Howardites and eucrites were blasted from the crust of Vesta by later impacts and arrived on Earth as meteorites. Photo: Bob King

The scientists measured the light from the dark patches on Vesta and discovered they were made of the same material as the dark carbon-rich fragments inside a group of fallen space rocks called eucrites and Howardites.

Asteroids, many of which orbit in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, come in all flavors. Some are made of bone-dry, rocky materials, others contain clays and water and still others are nearly pure metal. Bashing and smashing into one another they left their marks not only on each other but in the pieces that came (and still come) to Earth.

Read more about the new study HERE.

Curiosity snoops around ‘Shaler’; Comet L4 PanSTARRS update

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The Curiosity Rover used its high-resolution mast camera to photograph this rock outcrop called “Shaler” in the Glenelg area of Gale Crater on Dec. 7, 2012. The area in the photo spans about 3 feet in the foreground. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity rover, clueless about the end of the world, is spending this week tooling around a shallow depression called Yellowknife Bay looking for a good rock to drill. The images it’s been returning show a striking new landscape of upturned layers of rock reminiscent of layered shales here on Earth. Some of them lie at angles to one another – what geologists call cross-bedding – that indicate a change in the rate or direction of flow of whatever it was that deposited the beds. In this case it’s likely water but could also be wind.

The rover used its ChemCam instrument to determine the rocks’ composition, but no word yet on what it is. One additional drive is planned this week before the rover team gets holiday break.

I found more pictures of the area at Curiosity’ raw image site which now has 31,570 images on file from the mission. Some of the photos take you in close for a down and dirty look at the rocks. Below you’ll find a sampling including a 3-D stereo photo. Additional Mars stereo images can be found HERE.

Raw image shows a closer-in view of layered rocks at the Shaler site. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Tightly cropped view of pebbles at the Shaler site. These that may have been rounded and polished by flowing water like the ones seen earlier by Curiosity. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

A stereo image shows a rock outcrop called “Hottah,” cited as evidence for vigorous flow of water in a long-ago Martian stream. Use a pair of blue-red glasses to see it in 3-D. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

While northern hemisphere sky watchers will have to wait until March to get a good look at Comet C/2011 L4 (PanSTARRS), folks down under are keeping an eye on it for us. The comet has recently reappeared in the dawn sky low in the eastern sky in the constellation Scorpius the scorpion for observers in the southern hemisphere. At the moment, it’s still a little fuzzball around magnitude 9.5-10.

Comet L4 PanSTARRS on the morning of Dec. 18, 2012. The numbers are star magnitudes. Kaufman estimates the comet was brighter than 10th magnitude. Details: 200mm lens, ISO 1600. Credit: Rob Kaufman

Rob Kaufman of Bright, Victoria, Australia shared a photo of the comet taken on Dec. 18. If   L4 PanSTARRS follows brightness predictions, it could reach -1 magnitude or nearly as bright as the star Sirius low in the evening sky in mid-March. I can’t think of a finer way to introduce the new season.

Curiosity soil sample results in; see the moon by night or day

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Self-portrait of Curiosity at the Rocknest site, where it scooped up soil samples from a wind drift of sandy material. Click for larger annotated picture. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars Curiosity delivered this week on the eagerly anticipated soil sample analysis, sniffing out water, sulfur and chlorine-containing substances, among other ingredients. The rover examined the sample with the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. SAM used three methods to analyze gases given off from the dusty sand when it was heated in a tiny oven. By the way, the water seen by SAM was not wet but bound as molecules to grains of sand or dust. Interestingly, the amount measured was higher than anticipated.

Although SAM can detect organic compounds, none were found with the exception of chlorinated methane. NASA cautions that while the chlorine part was definitely Martian, the carbon in this one-carbon organic molecule may have been brought to Mars by the rover.

“We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater,” said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

CheMin’s examination of Rocknest samples found the sandy soil composed of about half common volcanic minerals mixed with other rocky materials including a substantial amount of small bits of glass.

Collage showing the variety of soils found at landing sites on Mars. The investigations found similar soil at all landing sites.The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit’s landing region in Gusev Crater is seen in both pictures at top; Viking’s landing site is shown at lower left; and a close-up of Curiosity’s Gale Crater soil is at lower right. In Gusev Crater, white subsurface deposits (upper left) excavated with Spirit’s wheels proved to be minerals that formed in wet environments. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Carbon from Earth may not have been all Curiosity brought from home. About 250,000 bacterial spores – a tiny but not negligible number -  throughout the rover are assumed to have survived the landing, NASA officials say, according to a September article in the LA Times. Nearly all of them are believed to have perished within minutes of exposure to bitter cold, intense ultraviolet radiation and an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide. Still, some bacteria have survived worse.

SAM also found the oxygen-chlorine compound perchlorate, a salt of perchloric acid that’s used here on Earth in the making of fireworks, rocket fuel and some medicines. Perchlorate was also found in the Martian Arctic by NASA’s Phoenix lander in 2010.

For more details, check out the press release I used as my source. In related news, Curiosity has made the list of candidates for TIME magazine’s Person of the Year 2012. If the rover and her team rate high on your list of high achievers, click HERE to cast your vote. Voting closes on 11:59 PM on December 12th. Real-time rankings are HERE – as of this afternoon, the robot is in 8th place, ahead of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and The Higgs Boson Particle. Go Curiosity!

The moon rises south of Regulus tonight around 10:15 p.m. and clears the treetops a half hour or more later. Watch for it again in the opposite part of the sky during the morning hours tomorrow. Created with Stellarium

Last night our sky finally cleared again. Great to see the Milky Way followed by the rising of the waning gibbous moon. This morning, I caught the moon again around 9 a.m. in a blue sky off to the west. Tonight the moon rises about an hour later and will come up alongside Leo’s brightest star Regulus. If you’re out around 11 o’clock you’ll see it in a dark sky; look again Wednesday morning between sunrise and 10 a.m. and you’ll see it in full daylight, too.

The moon can appear both at night and day when it rises late at night and occupies the same part of the sky the sun does in the summer months. Like the summer sun, the moon stays up a long time before it sets, allowing us to spot in daylight.

Curiosity feels a storm coming; nine new images of asteroid 2007 PA8

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This nearly global mosaic of observations made by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 18, 2012, shows a dust storm in Mars’ southern hemisphere. Yellow arrows outline the area where large clouds of dust are on the move. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

As spring begins in Mars’ southern hemisphere, seasonal dust storms are already kicking into gear. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been tracking a significant storm from orbit since last week. Though still more than 800 miles from both the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, Curiosity’s weather station has already detected changes in the atmosphere including a drop in air pressure and slightly warmer overnight temperatures.

Closeup of an earlier Martian dust storm as it chugs across the planet. Credit: NASA

“This is now a regional dust storm. It has covered a fairly extensive region with its dust haze, and it is in a part of the planet where some regional storms in the past have grown into global dust hazes,” said Rich Zurek, chief Mars scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “For the first time since the Viking missions of the 1970s, we are studying a regional dust storm both from orbit and with a weather station on the surface.”

On Mars as on Earth, the sun rises higher in the sky during spring, heating both air and ground. Temperature differences between the quickly-warming ground and the chilly south polar region drive strong winds which pick up dust and loft it into Mars’ thin atmosphere. There it’s heated by the sun and warms the surrounding air, causing a rise in air temperature. Curiosity has measured a 45-degree Fahrenheit increase in the temperature 16 miles above the Gale Crater landing site.

The global dust storm of 2001 before it started (left) and when it peaked. Photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA / J. Bell

Both rover sites are experiencing elevated dust levels “typical of a hazy summer day in Los Angeles” according to the MRO weather report of the week. Along with winds, warmer air temps also cause water ice clouds across the Martian tropical latitudes to diminish. Scientists are eager to study storms like this one to determine why some remain regional, while others go global. Regional storms from 2001 and 2007 expanded and affected vast areas of the planet.

I remember 2001 in particular. Amateur astronomers looked forward that year to Mars’ close approach to Earth. Just when the planet was at its biggest and best, a regional dust storm went global and veiled all but the largest surface features. This month’s storm might be starting to settle, but only continued observation will tell.

Nine new radar images of the one-mile-wide near-Earth asteroid 2012 PA8 were obtained between Oct. 31 and Nov. 13, 2012, with data collected by NASA’s 230-foot-wide Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif. Click to enlarge to appreciate the finer details. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA also just released a new collage of radar pictures of the near-Earth asteroid 2007 PA8 that missed Earth by a comfortable 4 million miles back on Nov. 5. The images are not only crisper that the previous batch of three, they reveal boulders, a decidedly irregular shape, possible craters and a slow rotation.

Detail from Nov. 5 with boulders. Credit: NASA

While the resolution varied according to the asteroid’s distance, it was as fine as 12 feet per pixel (one of those little salt-and-pepper squares in the black and photos above) during closest approach on Nov. 5 and 6.

New radar measurements during the flyby allowed scientists to refine the asteroid’s orbit and predict its motion more than 600 years into the future. The good news? 2007 PA8 isn’t a threat to Earth now or hundreds of years down the road. Its 2012 visit was the closest since 1880 and won’t be bested until 2488, when it zooms 3.6 million miles from Mother Earth.