Astronomy Picture of the Day 12-14-03

Explanation: Wouldn't it be fun if clouds were turtles? Wouldn't it be fun if the laundry on the bedroom chair was a friendly monster? Wouldn't it be fun if rock mesas on Mars were faces or interplanetary monuments? Clouds, though, are small water droplets, floating on air. Laundry is cotton, wool, or plastic, woven into garments. Famous Martian rock mesas known by names like the Face on Mars appear quite natural when seen more clearly, as the above recently released photo shows. Is reality boring?

Even with the more detailed image, people will believe nonsense like a "face" on Mars. Hmph. How big IS that hill? Not the size of a pyramid! And anyway why would it look like a HUMAN face? That's arrogance for sure.

NATIONAL  AERONAUTICS  AND  SPACE  ADMINISTRATION
VIKING  NEWS  CENTER
PASADENA,  CALIFORNIA
(213) 354-6000
							Viking 1-61
							P-17384 (35A72)
PHOTO CAPTION						July  31,  1976

This picture is one of many taken in the northern latitudes of Mars by the Viking 1 Orbiter in search of a landing site for Viking 2.

The picture shows eroded mesa-like landforms. The huge rock formation in the center, which resembles a human head, is formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth. The feature is 1.5 kilometers (one mile) across, with the sun angle at approximately 20 degrees. The speckled appearance of the image is due to bit errors, emphasized by enlargement of the photo. The picture was taken on July 25 from a range of 1873 kilometers (1162 miles). Viking 2 will arrive in Mars orbit next Saturday (August 7) with a landing scheduled for early September.

Many point to this and claim a NASA coverup or some such conspiracy theory. The problem is the format. The JPG method of compressing data to a smaller file size results in a phenomenon known as "lossy compression". See THIS PAGE for more information. The compression of the data stream was necessary for the limited computers of the time. A LOT of data was lost. Try compressing an image as JPG as far as you can, then enlarge it. Not too good. Thus the original Cydonia image is SUSPECT. What we saw there was not a true representation of the panorama that Viking looked upon.

Why astrobiologists look to Saturn's moon Titan
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA NEWS RELEASE
Posted: December 12, 2003

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is the best place in the solar system to study primordial soup -- the stuff from which life emerged.

In January 2005, planetary scientists will get a closer look at Titan's version of primordial soup when the European Space Agency's Huygens probe floats to the surface. The probe currently is riding aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which will reach Saturn next July.

Landing on an ocean would be better than on a solid surface. Credit: ESA

"Cassini/Huygens will tell us all about the organics in the atmosphere, the stuff that's photochemically processed by sunlight and falls to the surface," said University of Arizona planetary sciences Professor Jonathan I. Lunine. "But what it won't be quite so good at is telling us what goes on at the surface."

Lunine is one of the three interdisciplinary scientists on the Cassini/Huygens mission, and heads NASA's Astrobiology Institute focus group on Titan. This group includes scientists who want to learn more about the organic chemistry of Titan's environments.

In addition, Lunine and Mark Smith collaborate with Caltech and NASA Jet Propulsion Lab scientists and engineers in designing an organic chemistry laboratory that could be deployed to Titan's surface. Smith is head of UA's chemistry department.

"We really don't know how life formed on the Earth, or on whatever planet it formed," Lunine said. "Because we are organic, with carbon and hydrogen, we want to know more about organic molecules. How do molecules change chemically into biomolecules in an environment that is not conducive to life? There are no traces left of how it happened on Earth because all of Earth's organic molecules have been processed biochemically by now. Titan is our best chance to study organic chemistry in a planetary environment occurring in the absence of life over billions of years."

Scientists have focused much of their attention on Titan's thick atmosphere, which is four times denser than Earth's atmosphere at sea level. Like Earth, and unlike Mars and Venus, Titan has mostly a nitrogen atmosphere. But because Titan is 10 times farther from the sun than Earth, surface temperatures hover around minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit. That's too cold for water vapor, even though the planet-like moon is half rock and half water.

Titan's primarily nitrogen atmosphere contains methane. Methane reacts with ultraviolet sunlight, forming organic compounds that flake from the sky. The thick atmosphere protects the hydrocarbons and other organic solids that settle on the surface from being destroyed by damaging particle and ultraviolet radiation. Some of these organic molecules are thought to have been important in Earth's prebiotic environment.

"Cassini-Huygens will be the stepping stone that will tell us where the organics are located on the surface, and it will tell us whether there are differences in organics that have been deposited in craters or in regions that seem to have been resurfaced by cyrovolcanism." Cryovolcanism is volcanism where the fluid is not molten rock, but liquid water that possibly includes ammonia and other antifreezes. "These are interesting places because liquid water might have been briefly present and modified the organics in some way."

Last year, Lunine and Natalia Artemieva of the Institute for Geospheres in Moscow published a paper on how much water ice in Titan would melt if the moon were hit by an asteroid or other object, and how that would affect organic materials on Titan's surface.

If astrobiologists don't get some answers from Titan, they'll have to hunt for them in other solar systems.

"Our solar system can be a frustrating place," Lunine said. "There are only nine planets -- some people say eight because they exclude Pluto -- and there are only 60 moons, not 6,000. And of those 60 moons and 8 or 9 planets, there's only one place without life that has abundant organic chemistry, energy sources, a solid surface where organic molecules can actually survive and be processed, sometimes along with liquid water. And that place is Titan."

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