Кадр дня: Radar Indicates Buried Glaciers on Mars
23 ноября 2008 » Нажмите, для открытия спойлера | Press to open the spoiler «
Data Reconstruction Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech/UTA/UA/MSSS/ESA/DLR/JPL Solar System Visualization Project
Explanation: What created this unusual terrain on Mars? The floors of several mid-latitude craters in Hellas Basin on Mars appear unusually grooved, flat, and shallow. New radar images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter bolster an exciting hypothesis: huge glaciers of buried ice. Evidence indicates that such glaciers cover an area larger than a city and extend as much as a kilometer deep. The ice would have been kept from evaporating into the thin Martian air by a covering of dirt. If true, this would indicate the largest volume of water ice outside of the Martian poles, much larger than the frozen puddles recently discovered by the Phoenix lander. Such lake-sized ice blocks located so close to the Martian equator might make a good drinking reservoir for future astronauts exploring Mars. How the glaciers originally formed remains a mystery. In the meantime, before packing up to explore Mars, please take a moment to suggest a name for NASA's next Martian rover.
Источник: apod.nasa.gov Кадр дня: Lee Clouds in the Russian Ural Mountains
23 ноября 2008» Нажмите, для открытия спойлера | Press to open the spoiler «
The MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image which shows the movement of air and weather over the Ural Mountains in southern Russia at 12:20 pm local time on November 13, 2008. The most obvious pattern shown in the image is the influence of the mountains on precipitation, in this case, snow. A storm moving from the west bumped up against the Ural Mountains. The mountains tend to wring the moisture out of storms, and so, the western mountains are covered in snow, while the land to the east, on the lee side of the mountains, is bare.
1km (42.3 KB)
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500m (61.7 KB)
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250m (116.7 KB)
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Источник: Nasa