Mars rovers provide another perspective on farside solar activity

[Newbie]

5 hours ago, Sam Warfel said:

The resolution is so poor, the spots do have to be decently large/dark to show up at all. They might not be monsters, but maybe worth a look.
Tiny ones wouldn’t show up at all

This is true, each Mastcam image is around 90 pixels, worse than some of my magnetogram posts 🤣

Sunspot detection is not the primary focus of these cameras. Rather, they provide a record of the daily atmospheric conditions on Mars. 

The fact that the cameras image the largest sunspots is a bonus.

N.

 

 

Edited January 9 by Newbie
Bad grandma 🤣(grammar)

[arjemma]

4 hours ago, Sam Warfel said:

The resolution is so poor, the spots do have to be decently large/dark to show up at all. They might not be monsters, but maybe worth a look.
Tiny ones wouldn’t show up at all

That’s true, didn’t think of it that way. Those spots have been bigger on earlier photos though so they aren’t the biggest compared to those previous images.

Either way, it’s really nice that we get images of the sun from Mars.

Edited January 9 by arjemma

[hamateur 1953]

4 hours ago, Newbie said:

This is true, each Mastcam image is around 90 pixels, worse than some of my magnetogram posts 🤣

Sunspot detection is not the primary focus of these cameras. Rather, they provide a record of the daily atmospheric conditions on Mars. 

The fact that the cameras image the largest sunspots is a bonus.

N.

 

 

I liked “ Bad Grandma “ better @Newbie   Just sayin’ after all, it  is more correct phonetically….haha 

Edited January 9 by hamateur 1953

[Solar_Marcel]

 

 

The farside map looks very promising to me

http://jsoc.stanford.edu/data/farside/

Edited January 9 by Solar_Marcel
already covered in this topic

[Philalethes]

7 minutes ago, Solar_Marcel said:

these certainly cant be dead pixels. They even have the characteristic of Stars, but the "real" color filtered out

I thought the same at first, but eventually it became clear that they were in fact artifacts; if you read the further comments you'll see the discussion about it.

[tniickck]

12 Jan image: 3538 circled in red (i guess) and we see a big spot (I rotated this image and now it looks like it would look from space) 

[Newbie]

26 minutes ago, tniickck said:

12 Jan image: 3538 circled in red (i guess) and we see a big spot (I rotated this image and now it looks like it would look from space) 

That’s pretty cool @tniickck

N.

[hamateur 1953]

Interesting.  @tniickck so with enough practise and getting our orientations correct, we will have a pretty good alternate for viewing the previously concealed backside of Mr Max.  Cool.  

[Philalethes]

1 hour ago, tniickck said:

12 Jan image: 3538 circled in red (i guess) and we see a big spot (I rotated this image and now it looks like it would look from space) 

Can you really be sure about this? 3538 did flare quite a bit as it departed and right beyond the limb, but it didn't look like it really had any very significant spots as it departed. Feel welcome to share further thoughts on it, but it could be trying to match a pattern that isn't there (like I erroneously did with stars earlier in the thread, since it was something I'd had success with from looking at coronagrams where it's possible to do so).

[Newbie]

29 minutes ago, Philalethes said:

Can you really be sure about this? 3538 did flare quite a bit as it departed and right beyond the limb, but it didn't look like it really had any very significant spots as it departed. Feel welcome to share further thoughts on it, but it could be trying to match a pattern that isn't there (like I erroneously did with stars earlier in the thread, since it was something I'd had success with from looking at coronagrams where it's possible to do so).

It’s hard to give a definitive answer without being able to correlate the images with far side maps.
This is not an exact science at the moment so any attempt to make sense of what we see on the far side of Mars should be welcomed!

is there another candidate for this group?

N.

 

[Jesterface23]

This would be my guess, might need to scale it up a bit,

...........

And an attempt to remake it, but I can't make new regions,

(Maybe should have had it tilted a little bit more)

[hamateur 1953]

Nice graphics @Jesterface23 what would that region have been? Any ideas?   I am assuming rotation is toward us, of course.  So it’s assuming that your orientation is correct, based on latitudes ( which change little usually) That this region developed on or near the west limb?  Hopefully im correct so far. 

56 minutes ago, Jesterface23 said:

This would be my guess, might need to scale it up a bit,

...........

And an attempt to remake it, but I can't make new regions,

(Maybe should have had it tilted a little bit more)

 

Edited January 13 by hamateur 1953

[Jesterface23]

7 minutes ago, hamateur 1953 said:

what would that region have been? Any ideas?   I am assuming rotation is toward us, of course.  

Both images are roughly lined up. The solar imagery in the second image would have been very late on the 6th with the top region being 3538 and left region being 3534. A new region likely formed over the past 48 hours to see the spots seen from Mars.

[hamateur 1953]

38 was north 21 approx. 3534 south 12 latitude approximately   Works for me. Cool!    We lose another good guy 3539 soon. N eleven degrees  for corroboration in case anyone is keeping track. 

Edited January 13 by hamateur 1953

[tniickck]

a new image. i see a big sunspot group but i dont get why the previous are gone

and this may actually be the 3538

[Jesterface23]

3 hours ago, tniickck said:

a new image. i see a big sunspot group but i dont get why the previous are gone

I'd take it the rover moved a bit since the previous image or Mars rotated and something with the imager needs to rotate to get the image

...........

And from that new image, the north pole of the Sun should be just about 55 degrees on the top left side, give or take several degrees.

Edited January 13 by Jesterface23

[Philalethes]

15 minutes ago, Jesterface23 said:

I'd take it the rover moved a bit since the previous image or Mars rotated and something with the imager needs to rotate to get the image

As far as I'm aware Mastcam-Z can rotate 360° and point close to 90° up or down; this scientific article on its predecessor, Mastcam, on the Curiosity rover, states:

Quote

The Mastcams, mounted on the ~2 m tall Remote Sensing Mast, have a 360° azimuth and ~180° elevation field of regard.

[...]

The RSM can point the Mastcams +91° (up) to −87° (down) in elevation; azimuth pointing permits full 360° views.

And this popsci article describes roughly the same for Mastcam-Z in particular:

Quote

Because of the way it's mounted, Mastcam-Z can rotate a full 360-degrees for panoramas around the rover. It can also look a full 180-degrees up and down.

If this is indeed the case then there's really no way of knowing the orientation of the Solar surface in the images at all without resorting to further information, because it can essentially do the equivalent of you tilting your head up and spinning around, giving you a view in any orientation you'd like.

[Sam Warfel]

54 minutes ago, Philalethes said:

resorting to further information

Is this information publicly available anywhere, if we wanted to really get into the weeds and try to determine the mastcam’s orientation at the time the images are taken?  I’m afraid I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

[Philalethes]

5 minutes ago, Sam Warfel said:

Is this information publicly available anywhere, if we wanted to really get into the weeds and try to determine the mastcam’s orientation at the time the images are taken?  I’m afraid I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

I doubt that it's publicly available anywhere, but I would assume that's mostly because it would rarely be of interest; presumably NASA does know the orientation of the rover, as well as exactly how much the camera has been rotated and tilted, from which it should be possible to find out exactly (combined with its location, which is publicly available here). Either someone would have to find that data if it actually is public somewhere, or kindly ask NASA to publish it along with the images; or maybe even ask them to calculate this and reorient the images themselves, since they presumably have a lot of people for whom it would be relatively easy, should be useful to do for space weather forecasting in general anyway.

[tniickck]

today's:

it looks like they've turned it right

[arjemma]

I'm glad that they seem to have changed the orientation. It looks like a nice region at the left side of the picture but that seems to be it when it comes to larger regions. I just love that we have this perspective of the sun.

[Newbie]

41 minutes ago, arjemma said:

I'm glad that they seem to have changed the orientation. It looks like a nice region at the left side of the picture but that seems to be it when it comes to larger regions. I just love that we have this perspective of the sun.

It still blows me away @arjemma that we are actually getting almost live feed from Mars!! 
Something that was in the not too distant past, merely a dream.

The most important takeaway from all of this is we can now verify in certain instances what we indirectly observe, helioseismologically, on far side maps. 

N. 

[hamateur 1953]

56 minutes ago, arjemma said:

I'm glad that they seem to have changed the orientation. It looks like a nice region at the left side of the picture but that seems to be it when it comes to larger regions. I just love that we have this perspective of the sun.

Even cooler @Jesterface23 and @arjemma  Donald J. Trump has promised that his next presidency will include in addition to disposal of nuclear materials into our sun, a nice demarcation line encircling Mars to provide us with better orientation for the Mars rover shots! (Jk) 😁

[arjemma]

22 hours ago, Newbie said:

It still blows me away @arjemma that we are actually getting almost live feed from Mars!! 
Something that was in the not too distant past, merely a dream.

The most important takeaway from all of this is we can now verify in certain instances what we indirectly observe, helioseismologically, on far side maps. 

N. 

Me too! Sometimes I just stop what I'm doing and really appreciate that I am alive in a point in time where our technological advancements are happening so fast. I'm just in awe. 

Yes this will really help us analyze the far side maps and how accurate they are in different instances. That will in turn help us follow large active regions development after they rotate over the limb.

22 hours ago, hamateur 1953 said:

Even cooler @Jesterface23 and @arjemma  Donald J. Trump has promised that his next presidency will include in addition to disposal of nuclear materials into our sun, a nice demarcation line encircling Mars to provide us with better orientation for the Mars rover shots! (Jk) 😁

Haha I laughed out loud for this one 😂 Thanks for the laugh Mike!

[Sapphire828]

I agree with @Philalethes the best way to determine orientation would be based on the location of the rover, time of day, direction the rover is facing, and camera parameters at the time of the picture. NASA likely has all the info, would just be a matter of publishing it along with the pictures.

I think we have been lucky recently with the rover heading in the same direction and making its solar observations around the same time of the day. Yes, the rover can look straight up and spin but it's unlikely.

We need a big sunspot to get to the west limb, there's an overlapping region that would allow us to see it from Earth and in the pictures from Mars. The question is how big would the spot have to be to positively match it in the Mars images?