Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe: MARS PLANET - Hubble's Decades-Long Look at Mars Reveals Much About the Red Planet (Video)

Sunday, May 22, 2016

MARS PLANET - Hubble's Decades-Long Look at Mars Reveals Much About the Red Planet (Video)

Hubble's Decades-Long Look at Mars Reveals Much About the Red Planet (Video):

Mars is at opposition with the Earth this Sunday (May 22), meaning the Red Planet and the Blue Marble are at their closest proximity to each other as they orbit the sun.

In celebration of this event, the Hubble Space Telescope snapped a new picture of Mars. The image shows a hazy blue rim around the dusty orange sphere. Space.com spoke with Jennifer Wiseman, a NASA Hubble senior scientist, about the benefits of observing Mars with different instruments, and the insights that Hubble has given scientists about our own solar system.

"With telescopes like Hubble we actually get a global view of the planet," Wiseman said. For Mars, those global observations can then be combined with observations by instruments orbiting the planet, as well as those on its surface. "And we need all of this information together to give us an idea of what's going on on Mars now, and what Mars was like in the past, as well." [Mars at Opposition: See the Red Planet with Your Own Eyes This Weekend]

The new Hubble image shows a wide variety of features on the Martian surface. The large orange region in the center is known as Arabia Terra, and is thought to be extremely old. Check out this video from Space.com to see the names of more of the physical features that appear in the new Hubble image.

This global view of Mars was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on May 12, 2016 ahead of the planet's arrival at opposition on May 22. The wide view lets scientists observe how climate impacts the entire planet.

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

"You can see clouds around the whole planet and that's what you're seeing in that kind of wispy bluish white color," Wiseman said. "Off to the right-hand side you can see the clouds surrounding an extinct volcano. And you can also see the polar regions clearly. So this image actually gives us a huge variety of features that we can see."

The Hubble telescope has produced incredible images of very distant cosmic objects, including thousands of galaxies, as well as gorgeous nebulas, and other jaw-dropping universal features.

But Hubble has also unearthed incredible new information about Earth's solar system.

"Hubble has been operating for over 26 years now and that means we have a long time-baseline of looking at planets in the solar system, including Mars." Wiseman said. "Because of this wealth of information, we can see how the planet as a whole changes over time. For planets like Jupiter, we've seen its atmosphere change, that red spot shrinking. For Saturn, we've seen things like the aurora on the poles come and go. We've even used Hubble to discover new moons around Pluto that we didn't know about before."

On Mars, scientists have seen dust storms completely blanket the planet's surface.

"It shows us that Mars is a very dynamic planet and we need that long time-baseline that Hubble has given us to really understand those dynamics," Wiseman added.

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article 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.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

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).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

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).