The mystery of the Mars dust storm
Ah…Mars! Mars is as closest to the Earth as it will be for the next 15 years! You can see it easily if you look directly south after 10 p.m. It is not too much improved with binoculars, but it might be worth a try to see if it improves the view. Mars, more than any other of the planets, is affected by local turbulence in our atmosphere. For even the mightiest of Earth-based telescopes, getting a clear picture of Mars has always been difficult. Not until the Hubble Space Telescope, outside the Earth’s atmosphere, did we begin to get sharper images of Mars. Now we have imaging satellites around Mars itself and we have very sharp pictures of the terrain.
I, of course, wanted to get the best photos I could with my amateur equipment — along with thousands of other amateurs across the world. But…what has occurred has made my efforts very disappointing indeed!
Mars can have planetcovering dust storms. Mars’ atmosphere is very tenuous. If human beings go there, they will need to wear pressure-suits to stay alive, since Mars’ atmosphere would exert very little pressure on human bodies. Nevertheless, Mars is covered in exceedingly fine sand and even the tenuous Mars atmosphere can have winds sufficient to drive this talc-like sand into the atmosphere. When this kind of Martian weather occurs, it can really obscure the whole planet.
So…here are all the world’s astronomers, professional and amateur alike, waiting patiently since 2016 (when a close Mars last happened) to get good views and images of the Red Planet. What happens? Mars looks like an orange cue ball! Surface detail is completely obscured!
Here is an interesting mystery. No one knows how a dust storm on Mars can begin as a small patch of turbulence, say about the size of Benton County, and within days develop into a storm that covers the whole planet in obscuring dust. I have included my best try at imaging Mars and it is very disappointing. Getting this image involved several hours’ work from setting up the telescope and camera to final processing in sophisticated software. Multiply this by about 40 imaging attempts and you can imagine my frustration …
At a dark site, the Milky Way will stretch from the southern horizon back all the way to nearly the northern horizon. Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars will all be stretched across the southern horizon and Venus can be seen in the west after sunset. Overhead, Cygnus the Swan, or, since Christian times, the Northern Cross will be nearly overhead.
All in all, August nights can be some of the best for amateur observing, whether with the naked eye or binoculars or a telescope. The weather is warm, skies are often very clear, and from a dark site, the big universe is a marvelous site to behold. Of course, bugs will be a problem so wear a good repellent. Some of you may take vacations to places where the sky is really dark. Whatever you do in the daytime, get out at night and just let yourself see what is in the night sky. Doing this can really give you a wonderful sense of perspective.