It looks like people will finally be able to appreciate the beautiful Northern Lights, normally seen at night, even during the daytime thanks to the help of NASA's Polar satellite. Under the special ultraviolet filter provided by the satellite, scientists can take a look at the unusual substorm activity noted in Earth's magnetosphere. More details of this study can be found in the our full article.

Although it is a beautiful sight to behold up in Alaska and Canada, little is still known about the northern lights. But with NASA having launched the THEMIS fleet eight months ago with the sole purpose of gathering more information on this phenomena, man is slowly beginning to understand the spectacular occurrence.

More details about THEMIS' findings after the jump.

 

It had to be a record launch for the space agency. As reported by the Associated Press, NASA launched the most number of satellites in a rocket - FIVE - last Saturday. This was part of a mission to study geomagnetic substorms in the Earth's atmosphere. The satellites are collectively known as THEMIS, for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interaction during Substorms (not to be confused with THEMIS, the Thermal Emission Imaging System on the Mars Odyssey orbiter).

Scientists believe that geomagnetic substorms help intensify aurora displays (which is a good thing), as well as short out communications satellites, knock out power grids, and nuke airline passengers and spacewalking astronauts with high levels of radiation (definitely not good). And they don't know how they occur. Definitely not good either, considering what they could do to airline passengers.

The mission team at the University of California-Berkeley ground station confirmed that THEMIS was working fine after launch.

Odd spots, fan-like and spider-shaped markings could be found on Mars' ice cap. They're quite strange, so researchers gathered to study these strange formations.

The study was co-authored by Philip Christensen from Arizona State University, while observations were made with the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), a multi-wavelength camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. Previously, "scientists thought the spots were patches of warm, bare ground exposed as the ice disappeared," Christensen says.

However, THEMIS revealed that the spots were "nearly as cold as the carbon dioxide ice." However, the study showed that the peculiar spots on Mars' southern ice cap are seasonal formations formed by thin layers of material. These materials are being emitted by carbon dioxide that erupt through the ice cap.

You see, the temperature in Mars during winter drops to a staggering minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Carbon dioxide ("Martian air"), according to Christensen, "freezes directly onto the surface of the permanent polar cap". During spring, sunlight passes through that frozen slab of carbon dioxide, such that the "ice touching the ground" immediately reverts to gas.

This "warmed material" releases pressurized gas, and the weak spots on the frozen slab break, enabling high-pressure gas to "shoot up at speeds of almost 100mph." The high-pressure gas is the culprit for the mysterious Martian markings: "the large particles land around vents to make the spots, while the lighter sand grains blow downwind, creating the fans."

It’s not Kodak. It’s Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on board NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft. THEMIS is a special multi-wavelength camera with five visual bands and ten infrared bands. THEMIS, designed mainly to map rock makeup and detect heat, yields information on the physical and thermal properties of the Martian surface.

After orbiting the planet since 2001, Odyssey has provided scientists enough to create a colorful mosaic "Were taking the daytime infrared and the nighttime infrared and the daytime visible data … and merging them all together to make well-calibrated and beautiful imagery," said Philip Christensen, Principal Investigator for the 2001 Mars Odyssey’s THEMIS instrument.

THEMIS, however, is more than a pretty painter.  The data gathered by the satellite can help scientists in picking good landing spots for future missions such as the Phoenix Scout set to fly next year.  Phoenix is scheduled to land in May 2008 in the planet's water-ice-rich northern polar region. So far the Martian snapshots have revealed a dark reveal a rocky world. It’s not sandy like Tatoine or anything like the Dust Bowl. "I don’t rule out that there are hot spots … nor near surface water,” Christensen said. "We’re just to the point where we can start to do that."

Christensen and his colleagues are working on some 2,000 THEMIS image pairs taken a year apart. Christensen said that work is underway to build up a global mosaic.

Almost all of us are in the know when it comes to the possibility of Mars having had streams and rivers a long while back in its history. Sure, it's a very good thing to be as interested in this as the scientists and researchers involved in Mars explorations are, but maybe we should also be looking at the general picture.

Sediments found in craters just east of the Meridiani Planum give us more knowledge of the Red Planet's history. The craters (and everything inside them) confirm Mars' history of formation by impact, burial and exhumation by erosion, and the filling of sediments.

An unnamed crater 27 miles wide found near the large Schiaparelli crater shows many features proving it to be one of the oldest craters formed in Mars. It was supposedly formed during the Noachian period. With the help of the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on the Mars Odyssey orbiter, a false color image was formed to help determine what the crater could tell scientists about the planet.

Found inside the crater are dustier and sandier areas, and places with rock and hardened sediments at the surface. These prove that after the crater was formed, sediments filled the entire crater before erosion set in and brought it to its present state. The sediments stand about 3,300 ft higher than the crater's floor.

Analyzing the crater more using the false color image, one can see ridges divide and curve on the sediment stack. And yes, this might mean water flowed through what looks like former channels. Or these could just be the work of erosion on ledges in thin sedimentary layers.

Yardangs 800 to 900 feet apart were also found on the surface. These are cone-shaped hills formed by the wind. Some may think these may be volcanoes but they aren't as yardangs occur only in relatively soft materials.

Just around the edge of the sedimentary stack are dust-rich materials that show signs of depressions and small channels where - you guessed right - water might have flowed. (And we're back again to the topic "Was there water on Mars?".)

One good way to determine this is to compare the Red Planet to our own. If during climatic shifts the Earth's polar regions can warm enough to let lose water to the tropics, then maybe that could have happened to Mars too. Climate cycles in that planet could have left deposits of ice-rich and dusty material; and the depressions are actually scars of when the ground subsided after water or ice escaped.