New Web Site Features "Live" Images From Mars

MARSDAILY

Avalanches of rock and dust scar the sides of mesas in Mars' Noctis Labyrinthus badlands, in a false-color view taken by THEMIS, the Thermal Emission Imaging System, aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. This THEMIS nighttime temperature image shows warmer areas in redder colors and colder areas in bluer tones. Temperature images help scientists distinguish dust-covered surfaces from rocky ones: dust cools quickly at night on Mars, while rocks retain daytime heat. Here the colors show a jumble of Sun-warmed rocks deposited by landslides where several channels join. On the slopes above, rocks mix with cooler dust, while on the mesa tops, cold dust generally prevails. The field of view spans 17 by 24 miles (28 by 39 kilometers), and the smallest details in the full-resolution image are about 58 feet (18 meters) across. Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University. See larger image.

Tempe AZ (SPX) Oct 17, 2005
A new web site at Arizona State University provides the public and scientists "live" views of Mars. A scrolling panel that runs continually shows visual and infrared images of Mars as they are received from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter spacecraft.

"These images appear on the site at the same time the THEMIS science team sees them," says Phil Christensen, Regents Professor of Geological Sciences at ASU and the principal investigator for the THEMIS instrument. "No other orbiter mission is providing anything like this global view of Mars."

THEMIS is a specialized camera on the Mars Odyssey orbiter spacecraft, which was launched in 2001. The device uses five visual and 10 infrared filters to study the mineralogy of Mars, as well as the thermal and physical properties of the Martian surface. At visual wavelengths, THEMIS has a resolution of 59 feet (18 meters) per pixel, while at infrared wavelengths its resolution is 328 feet (100 meters) per pixel.

The new THEMIS web site includes:

A "Feature of the Week" with an interactive image viewer. It presents a large, detailed, and often-colorful THEMIS image mosaic showing one particular part of Mars. An interactive viewer lets users scroll and zoom within the image over the Internet. Text describes key features of interest in the image.

An interactive Mars map showing all released THEMIS images. The map gives everyone - from school children to scientific researchers - access to all 82,000 released THEMIS images. Users can pan and zoom across Mars, selecting images and downloading them in a variety of formats at full resolution.

A gallery of Mars images arranged by topic. It includes 800 annotated images of the Red Planet, arranged by topic. Anyone wishing to explore Martian dunes, polar caps, landslides, craters and more can find them with a mouse click or two. There's even a "best of" THEMIS page with highlights from the image archive.

A list of the top scientific discoveries made with the instrument.

Visitors to the new THEMIS Web site also will find background information on the instrument and the Mars Odyssey mission.

"THEMIS is used by Mars scientists the world over," Christensen says. "That's why we added a discoveries page on the site to spotlight the more recent scientific findings made using THEMIS imagery."

These discoveries range from scouting a landing site for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, to identifying Earth-like igneous rocks on Mars, to spotting volcanic minerals that suggest Mars has been cold and dry for most of its 4.5-billion-year history.

MARSDAILY

The Martian Heat Signature

Moffett Field CA (SPX) Jul 08, 2005
Mars is a rocky planet with an ancient volcanic past, but new findings show the planet is more complex and active than previously believed - at least in certain places.