Uh-oh. Hope this is just a short-term event.
Courtesy of _Sky_&_Telescope_ ...
==================================================================
This Is SKY & TELESCOPE's AstroAlert for Planetary Activity
==================================================================
Veteran Mars observer Donald C. Parker reports that significant changes have taken place on Mars in the last 48 hours. "I'd call it a dust cloud, not a dust storm," he advises. "Let's hope it stays put!"
Beginning on July 1st, Parker noticed a marked weakening, or lightening, of the conspicuous dark feature Syrtis Major in images taken with his 16-inch Newtonian reflector in Coral Gables, Florida. Yet just the previous morning another Mars expert, Jeffrey D. Beish, had described Syrtis Major as dark
and normal when viewed visually with his own 16-inch at Lake Placid, Florida. Parker also noticed some bright ochre spots rimming the Hellas basin and partially obscuring the Iapygia region (between Hellas and Syrtis Major). Similar spots around Hellas had been imaged by Texas amateur Ed Grafton on June 28th.
By early this morning, July 2nd, it was clear that something major was taking place. Parker noted that the isolated clouds he'd seen over Iapygia the night before had coalesced and expanded to form one cloud, bright when viewed in red light. The coalescing cloud is on the side of the planet that can currently be studied most easily from the Americas. It is centered at
Martian latitude 25 degrees south, longitude 294 degrees west.
"It's scary. This is almost a repeat of what happened in 2001," says Parker. "But with Mars, who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky and it will just go away. We should know in a day or two."
Parker credits Beish, former Mars recorder for the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers, with having predicted this localized event almost to the day. In Beish's view the dust cloud is unlikely to become widespread. Rather, it may be the precursor of a global dust storm that Beish feels is a distinct possibility for September.
SKY & TELESCOPE's guide to this year's Mars apparition appeared in our June 2003 issue. An abridged version is on our Web site:
http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/objects/planets/article_985_1.asp
To find out which side of Mars is visible at any particular date and time, see our handy Mars Profiler JavaScript utility:
http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/objects/planets/article_997_1.asp
Finally, the following organizations invite reports from Mars observers:
Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rhill/alpo/mars.html
British Astronomical Association
http://www.britastro.org/mars/
International MarsWatch
http://elvis.rowan.edu/marswatch/
Wishing you clear and steady skies!
Roger W. Sinnott
Senior Editor
SKY & TELESCOPE
==================================================================
AstroAlert is a free service of SKY & TELESCOPE, the Essential
Magazine of Astronomy (http://SkyandTelescope.com/). This e-mail
was sent to AstroAlert subscribers. If you feel you received it
in error, or to unsubscribe from AstroAlert, please send a plain-
text e-mail to majordomo@No-Spam with the following
line -- and nothing else -- in the body of the message:
unsubscribe planetary e-mail@No-Spam
replacing "e-mail@No-Spam" with your actual e-mail address.
==================================================================