Curiosity captures shots of Mars’ layered hillsides

Posted Aug. 28, 2012

Curiosity hasn’t been idle. NASA released several exciting new images beamed back from the surface of Mars by the happy rover. They’re high resolution, full-color photos taken with the wide angle 34mm and telephoto 100mm Mastcam cameras. Those are the ones perched on the 7 foot-high mast that sticks out of Curiosity like the head of one of those mean Mars saucers in the original 1953 “War of the Worlds” movie.

Some of the wonderful layering at the base of Mt. Sharp was almost certainly deposited by lakes, rivers or flood plains that once sloshed around inside the crater. Orbiting satellites have detected signs of clays and other water-fashioned rocks within these very foothills.

I can’t help but recall the South Dakota Badlands, where sediment deposition by water happened over a period of more than 40 million years beginning 69 million years ago.

During the last half million years, water and wind erosion carved the Badlands, revealing layer upon layer of sediments stacked high like an uber-Viennese torte cake. Years ago, while hiking there with my wife, we came across the fossil teeth and jaws of extinct oreodonts eroding out of the mudstone mounds. What might be hidden in the Mars hills?

Volcanic ash, lava flows and windblown sands can also accumulate in beds, so Mt. Sharp’s layers likely have multiple origins just as the hills of the Badlands do.

While the hills look relatively close in the photo, it will take the rover many months to reach them as the team of rover drivers figure out a safe way through swales and sand dunes along the way. For additional new Mars pix, check out the Curiosity gallery (http://1.usa.

gov/U8V5sx ).

A very full moon

The moon looks pregnant lately. Tonight it will be only a few days from full and very close to a pair of bright binocular double stars in Capricornus the Sea Goat.

All you have to do is point your glass at the moon and look one degree (two moon diameters) to its upper right to find 3rd magnitude Beta Capricorni. Beta is a true double star with a 6th magnitude companion orbiting close by to the west. Don’t expect to see either one move anytime soon — they’re so far apart they require nearly a million years to orbit about their common center of gravity.

Above Beta you’ll see the even wider pair Alpha 1 and Alpha 2. While this duo looks like a convincing double star, it’s really a fake. It only appears double because they’re in the same line of sight. Alpha 2, the brighter star, is 109 light years away; Alpha 1 is over 6 times farther at 690 light years. Fake sure, but still pretty.

King is photo editor at the Duluth News Tribune and an amateur astronomer who blogs at astrobob.areavoices.com

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