Kuiper Education

NASA | How to Get Colder Than Anywhere Else

NASA | How to Get Colder Than Anywhere Else At the coldest spots on Earth, every breath is painful. But how cold can it get on Earth's surface? What sort of weather brings on the record-breaking cold? ...

The Coldest Place in the World

What is the coldest place on Earth? It is a high ridge in Antarctica on the East Antarctic Plateau where temperatures in several hollows can dip below minus 133.6 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 92 degrees Celsius) on a clear winter night.

Scientists made the discovery while analyzing the most detailed global surface temperature maps to date, developed with data from remote sensing satellites including the new Landsat 8, a joint project of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., joined a team of researchers reporting the findings Monday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Researchers analyzed 32 years' worth of data from several satellite instruments. They found temperatures plummeted to record lows dozens of times in clusters of pockets near a high ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, two summits on the ice sheet known as the East Antarctic Plateau. The new record of minus 136 F (minus 93.2 C) was set Aug. 10, 2010.

That is several degrees colder than the previous low of minus 128.6 F (minus 89.2 C), set in 1983 at the Russian Vostok Research Station in East Antarctica. The coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth is northeastern Siberia, where temperatures in the towns of Verkhoyansk and Oimekon dropped to a bone-chilling 90 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 67.8 C) in 1892 and 1933, respectively.
Auroras Underfoot (signup)

"We had a suspicion this Antarctic ridge was likely to be extremely cold, and colder than Vostok because it's higher up the hill," Scambos said. "With the launch of Landsat 8, we finally had a sensor capable of really investigating this area in more detail."

The quest to find out just how cold it can get on Earth -- and why -- started when the researchers were studying large snow dunes, sculpted and polished by the wind, on the East Antarctic Plateau. When the scientists looked closer, they noticed cracks in the snow surface between the dunes, possibly created when wintertime temperatures got so low the top snow layer shrunk. This led scientists to wonder what the temperature range was, and prompted them to hunt for the coldest places using data from two types of satellite sensors.

Wednesday–Sunday, Dec. 25–29, 10:08–10:14 p.m. EST

The Moon goes visiting

Over the next five mornings, just before dawn, the moon will pass by two planets and a bright star. It will be just west of Mars on Christmas morning:

Between Mars and Spica on Dec. 26
Just east of Spica on Dec. 27
Just west of Saturn on Dec. 28
And just below Saturn on Dec. 29

East and west in the sky are the reverse of east and west on Earth maps because we are looking up rather than looking down. Notice how the moon’s crescent shrinks over the five mornings, and how the stars and planets rise 4 minutes earlier each morning.

Planets

Mercury is well placed in the morning sky for observers in the northern hemisphere for the first ten days of December.

Venus is at greatest brilliance on December 6, low in the southwestern sky just after sunset.

Mars is continues to brighten in Virgo in the morning sky.
Jupiter rises in the northeast about an hour and a half after sunset and shines brightly in Gemini the rest of the night. The Great Red Spot is easier to see than in many recent years, showing a distinct orange color.

Saturn is low in morning twilight all month long, in the constellation Libra.

Uranus is visible all evening, setting around 1 a.m. It spends most of the month in Pisces, but makes a brief excursion into Cetus from Dec. 10 to 20.

Neptune, in Aquarius, is visible in the early evening and sets around 10 p.m.

SKYWATCHING TERMS

Asterism: A noteworthy or striking pattern of stars within a larger constellation.
Degrees (measuring the sky): The sky is 360 degrees all the way around, which means roughly 180 degrees from horizon to horizon. It’s easy to measure distances between objects: Your fist on an outstretched arm covers about 10 degrees of sky.
Visual Magnitude: This is the astronomer’s scale for measuring the brightness of objects in the sky. The dimmest object visible in the night sky under perfectly dark conditions is about magnitude 6.5. Brighter stars are magnitude 2 or 1. The brightest objects get negative numbers. Venus can be as bright as magnitude minus 4.9. The full moon is minus 12.7 and the sun is minus 26.8.
Terminator: The boundary on the moon between sunlight and shadow.
Zenith: The point in the sky directly overhead.

Night Sky: Visible Planets, Moon Phases & Events, December 2013


The night sky tonight and on any clear night offers an ever-changing display of fascinating objects you can see, from stars and constellations to bright planets, often the moon, and sometimes special events like meteor showers. Observing the night sky can be done with no special equipment, although a sky map can be very useful, and a good beginner telescope or binoculars will enhance some experiences and bring some otherwise invisible objects into view. Below, find out what’s up in the night sky tonight (Planets Visible Now, Moon Phases, Observing Highlights This Month) plus other resources (Skywatching Terms, Night Sky Observing Tips and Further Reading).

Aliensss..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Photographic Evidence?

Mars Landing Sites

Locations of landers and rovers on Mars. VL1 is Viking Lander 1, a stationary robot from 1976. MPF is Mars Pathfinder, a roving vehicle from 1997. Opportunity/Meridiani Planum is the second of the Mars Exploration Rovers that landed and drove in 2004. Isidis was the projected landing site for the European Space Agency's Beagle 2 stationary lander that was lost on arrival at Mars in 2003. VL2 is Viking Lander 2 that landed in 1976. Spirit/Gusev Crater is where Spirit landed and drove in 2004.

Credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC

Mars a Recap..!! (MUST WATCH)

mars

Spirit Mars Rover in 'McMurdo' Gazeta Panorama OnlineThis 360-degree view, called the "McMurdo" panorama, comes from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. From April through October 2006, Spirit stayed on a small hill known as "Low Ridge." There, the rover's solar panels were tilted toward the sun to maintain enough solar power for Spirit to keep making scientific observations throughout the winter on southern Mars. This view of the surroundings from Spirit's "Winter Haven" is presented in approximately true color.

The Pancam began shooting component images of this panorama during the 814th Martian day, or sol, of Spirit's work on Mars (April 18, 2006) and completed the part shown here on Sol 980 (Oct. 5, 2006).

This beautiful scene reveals a tremendous amount of detail in Spirit's surroundings. Many dark, porous-textured volcanic rocks can be seen around the rover, including many on Low Ridge. Two rocks to the right of center, brighter and smoother-looking in this image and more reflective in infrared observations by Spirit's miniature thermal emission spectrometer, are thought to be meteorites. On the right, "Husband Hill" on the horizon, the rippled "El Dorado" sand dune field near the base of that hill, and lighter-toned "Home Plate" below the dunes provide context for Spirit's travels from mid-2005 to early 2006.

Left of center, tracks and a trench dug by Spirit's right-front wheel, which could no longer rotate, exposed bright underlying material. This bright material is evidence of sulfur-rich salty minerals in the subsurface, providing clues about the watery past of this part of Gusev Crater.

A version of the McMurdo panorama without the rover deck, but including a supplemental figure with landscape features labeled, is at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01907 .

This is an approximately true-color, red-green-blue composite panorama generated from images taken through the Pancam's 600-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 480-nanometer filters. Some image mosaic seams and brightness variations in the sky as well as several other small areas of color mis-alignments or other mismatch problems have been smoothed over in image processing in order to simulate the view that a human would see if he or she were standing here and looking around. This "natural color" view is the rover team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if we were there and able to see it with our own eyes. It is presented as a cylindrical projection.

Spirit completed its three-month prime mission on Mars in April 2004, then continued operating in bonus extended missions into March 2010, when it ceased communicating.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

Opportunity's Journey, Approaching 10th Anniversary

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been working on Mars since landing inside Eagle Crater on Jan. 25, 2004 (Universal Time; evening of Jan. 24, Pacific Standard Time). The gold line on this image shows Opportunity's route from the landing site, in upper left, to the area it is investigating on the western rim of Endeavour Crater as the date approaches for the rover's 10th anniversary on Mars, in Earth years.

The map shows Opportunity's location as of the 3,486th Martian day, or sol, of its exploration of Mars (Nov. 13, 2013). By that sol, it had driven 24.01 miles (38.64 kilometers) and was ascending "Murray Ridge" above "Solander Point" on the rim of Endeavour Crater. The features are all within the Meridiani Planum region of equatorial Mars, which was chosen as Opportunity's landing area because of earlier detection of the mineral hematite from orbit.

Opportunity completed its three-month prime mission in April 2004 and has continued operations in bonus extended missions. It has found several types of evidence of ancient environments with abundant liquid water. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached Mars in 2006, completed its prime mission in 2010, and is also working in an extended mission.

This traverse map was made at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, Albuquerque. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the orbiter's Context Camera.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/NMMNHS