Don PARKER #215

Letters to the Editor

from Don PARKER in CMO #215

@. . . . . Richard McKim has kindly sent me drawings made by David Gray on 21 and 23 Feb. I scanned these and have attached them here. It certainly looks like a dust storm occurred over Aurorae S. and Margaritifer S. This is reminiscent of the July, 1997, event and of the October and November, 1990, events. The drawings from 21 Feb even hint at an anomalous albedo feature. I have e-mailed Richard to obtain permission for posting these on the Marswatch page.

(28 Mar 1999 email)

@. . . . . Attached are some more mars images -- lots of clouds!

DUST ALERT: Carlos Hernandez called today about a possible dust cloud over western M. Erythraeum. It apparently resembles the cloud reported in February by David Gray. Carlos observed with his 8-inch f/7.5 Newtonian at 305x. The cloud was bright in red (W23A). He observed at 04:10 UT on 31 March UT date (LCM=053degsW). Carlos will scan and e-mail the images as soon as possible.

(31 Mar 1999 14:25 email)

@. . . . . I just received e-mail from Jean Lecacheux and Francois Colas who have obtained some unbelievable Mars images at Pic-du-Midi. The March 24 695-nm image at 00:15 UT reveals some streaks in M. Erythraeum that could be the beginnings of the dust event Carlos described. Can't really tell for sure, since this region often displays halftones. These Pic images can be found at:
http://www.bdl.fr/s2p/mars/ma23399a.gif
Their site is:
http://www.bdl.fr/s2p/mars.html
Beautiful stuff!

(31 Mar 1999 20:38 email)

@. . . . . Attached are some images from this morning. The conditions were terrible, with winds gusting to 23 knots. Did manage to get some red and integrated light images. Processed them to a high gamma to show terminator features -- I didn't detect any dust clouds. No April Fools!

(1 Apr 1999 email)

Don PARKER ( FL, USA ) dparkr@netside.net