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Sunday, May 22, 2016

MARS PLANET - Hubble Telescope Captures Incredible Up-Close View of Mars

Hubble Telescope Captures Incredible Up-Close View of Mars:

An amazing new Mars image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope shows clouds, craters, ice caps and other features on the Red Planet.

Hubble took the photo on May 12, when Mars was just 50 million miles (80 million kilometers) from Earth. That's quite close in the cosmic scheme of things; Mars is nearly at "opposition" — when the planet and the sun are on exact opposite sides of Earth from each other — which will come on May 22.

Mars as it was observed shortly before opposition in May 2016 by the Hubble Space Telescope. Some prominent features are clearly visible, including the heavily eroded Arabia Terra in the center of the image and the small southern polar cap.

Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), J. Bell (ASU), and M. Wolff (Space Science Institute)

Opposition "marks the planet's closest approach to Earth, so that Mars appears bigger and brighter in the sky than usual," European Space Agency officials wrote today (May 19) in a description of the newly released photo. (The Hubble mission is run jointly by NASA and ESA). "This event allows astronomers using telescopes in space and on the ground to see more details on the Martian surface." [The 7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars]

The dates of closest approach and opposition don't mesh exactly. The closest approach will actually come on May 30, when Earth and Mars are separated by 46.8 million miles (75.3 million km).

The average time between Mars oppositions is about 780 days; the last time Earth, the Red Planet and the sun all lined up was in April 2014. And some closest approaches are closer than others. In 2003, for example, Mars came within 34.65 million miles (55.76 million km) of Earth — the closest the two planets had been in 60,000 years, ESA officials said.

The new Hubble photo, which the telescope took with its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, shows a natural-color view of Mars in which mountains, plains, canyons, craters and many other geological features are visible.

Annotated view of Mars as it was observed shortly before opposition in May 2016 by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), J. Bell (ASU), and M. Wolff (Space Science Institute)

"The orange area in the center of the image is Arabia Terra, a vast upland region," ESA officials wrote. "The landscape is densely cratered and heavily eroded, indicating that it could be among the oldest features on the planet."

"South of Arabia Terra, running east to west along the equator, are the long, dark features known as Sinus Sabaeus (to the east) and Sinus Meridiani (to the west)," they added. "These darker regions are covered by bedrock from ancient lava flows and other volcanic features."

Clouds blanket the dark volcanic plains of Syrtis Major, on the right side of Mars, and cover the extensive south polar ice cap as well. (The northern ice cap is quite small, because it's currently summer in Mars' northern hemisphere.)

Hubble launched in April 1990 aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Spacewalking astronauts repaired its flawed primary mirror in December 1993, and the famous telescope has been helping astronomers make big discoveries ever since. Barring any unforeseen events, Hubble should keep operating through at least 2020, and perhaps longer, NASA officials have said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

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UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).