Thanks Kirt. Maybe someone else has an old photo or two that they would share. Ed --- Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Edward Lunt <lunco@yahoo.com> wrote:
Kirt; Most interesting. I read somewhere, about two years ago, that the polar ice caps on Mars were receding due to higher temperatures on the planet. The suggestion was that if Mars was experiencing global warming, then global warming of the earth was in part, at least, to natural causes. Have you or anyone else heard or observed the Martian ice caps to see if they are indeed shrinking and if so, any ideas of what is happening? Thanks, Ed Lunt
Ed,
Here's a recent article mentioning Martian "Milankovitch cycles" and the Martian polar ice caps. The relevant para is lower down in the section marked "Recent water."
Bruce M. Jakosky and Michael T. Mellon. Water on Mars. Physics Today Online. (Online article) http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-4/p71.html
Unlike Earth, Mars lacks a large moon. This allows a greater range of motion for the obliquity of the Martian ecliptic. The range of motion for the obliquity of the Martian ecliptic is 10 deg to 40 deg as opposed to about 22 deg to 24.5 deg for Earth.
In the article, the authors describe how this has alot of implications for the long-term distribution of subsurface and surface water-ice on Mars - that is water is transported from higher to lower latitudes and back again in response to changes in the obliquity of the Martian ecliptic.
The authors describe several recently discovered features on Mars (e.g. - ice polygons at lower latitudes), the presence of which they attribute to the Martian "Milankovitch cycles" acting as a transport method.
I'm not sure how that relates to any historical changes in the last, let's say, a couple of hundred years, in the size of the Martian ice caps.
Are there historical and current photos of the Martian ice caps, lets say from the 1950s and today. Are the Martain ice caps shrinking?
- Canopus56(Kurt)
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Â Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Â Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com