Mapping Mars 2006

Our images should be here by the 22nd/23rd. We must be ready to analyze them and prepare the final report. We won't meet this week, but you should work:
1. Get all of your background images in order. If you have to add text, make measurements, identify features etc. do it!
2. Know exactly what your experiment will be and write it. Objective, hypothesis, independent and dependent variables, procedure.
3. How will you show your results? In almost all cases this will be done using a set of comparison images. Be sure you have those images collected. If they are THEMIS images print them and save them to something. If they are Earth-based, be sure you have citations ready for them.
4. Discussion. How ill you know if you've discovered something? How sure are you of your results? Think about this. You will be able to use the full set of 16 images plus and images we collected from last year. Do they show what you expected? There's nothing wrong with failure! If you don't prove your point, or find out that you were wrong, that's acceptable!
5. Abstract. Someone must write a one-paragraph summary of your entire project listing the objective, describing the experiment, and giving the results. Start this.
This all must be done by the end of school. We have the images for six months, but the 8th graders are moving on. So everything must be done by the end of this school year.

6. Best of luck on the MCAS exams!

Posted below is a message from ASU on our targeting results. " Well, for the most part - the images your students requested will be taken. Some of them are slightly adjusted to meet some of our mission planner needs, but all in all, things were good and the adjustments were minor. The Olympus Mons image I did not put in -- I figured this group was studying Alba, so I wanted them to keep focus. We were able to get both teams images of Alba....and I decided to find 2 areas on the eastern side of Alba that I also put in targets for, on behalf of these students. So for the real good news....we put in 16 images for your teams - so we will get both their primary and secondary images....with the exception of the Alba groups - we put in their original Alba requests, plus 2 others on the eastern side.Your students are going to get some AWESOME images!!!"

Hopefully by the end of today (5/11) all groups will have successfully targeted. We won't get the images until the 22nd. We also won't meet again until after MCAS ends. DON'T STOP WORKING!!!! Get the background report done. Download and work on any THEMIS images you are going to use in addition to your targeted image. Get everything done that can be done before you get the new images. There are very few days left and you have a HUGE amount of work to do. Decide who is going to do what and get started!

ASU has created an infrared mosaic of Alba Patera at http://www.mars.asu.edu/~cedwards/alba_patera/ Go to it and click on the small image. Then by using the controls at the bottom of the screen you can move around the image and zoom in. Supposedly you can take portions of the image and use them in Photoshop. I don't know how to do that yet. Enjoy!!