Changes in the heavens, or new craters on the planet Mars

In recent years the planet Mars has been saturated with visiting spacecraft and a consequence of all this attention is that change in the martian landscape is becoming easier to spot. Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was one of those machines; MGS was a NASA spacecraft operating in orbit about Mars from September 1997 to November 2006.

During early 2006 members of the MGS science team decided to look for signs of change:

"A year ago [2004/2005], it had not occurred to us, the MGS MOC science operations team, that we could find places on Mars where meteorites had impacted the surface during the course of the MGS mission. Such craters, if they were forming at all, would be a few meters to a few tens of meters across; much to small to notice (or so we thought) in our MOC wide angle camera coverage. But, on 9 January 2006, we began to realize that not only could we find such craters, we might also be able to characterize the present-day impact cratering rate on Mars. Surveying for fresh craters formed during the MGS mission would provide the first direct observation—for any body in the Solar System, including Earth and its Moon—of the present-day cratering rate, which in turn can help test models used all the time by members of the scientific community to estimate the age of features on planetary surfaces." (How we found the first of the fresh impact sites that formed during the Mars Global Surveyor Mission, MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-1611, 6 December 2006)

For me, aside from the excitement I feel about the science done and the thril of discovery, it shows that change occurs on places other than the Earth at time scales much less than the millions and billions of years we routinely hear of. In this case in a matter of months.

The image above (MOC2-1614-a) is of another fresh crater found by the MOC team on the slopes of the volcano Ulysses Patera in northern hemisphere of Mars, investigations determined that the impact occurred between 18 April 2003 and 7 February 2004. For further details follow this link.

A note on the sources used in this post: the image and information came from two sources, the database of Mars Orbiter Camera images at Malin Space Science Systems (the American corporation that built the camera that flew on the MGS) and from NASA's Planetary Photojournal. For convenience I given here a link to a number of pages at the Malin Space Sciences Systems web site, Present-Day Impact Cratering and Gully Activity on Mars MGS MOC Releases MOC2-1611 through MOC2-1622, 6 December 2006.

For those who want to read the actual science done here is the citation to the article from the journal Science (unfortunately the Science website only provides the abstract, i.e. summary, so check with your favourite library):

Present-day impact cratering rate and contemporary gully activity on Mars Michael C. Malin, Kenneth S. Edgett, Liliya V. Posiolova, Shawn M. McColley, Eldar Z. Noe Dobrea, Science 8 December, 2006, 314 (5085), p. 1573-1577.

Astronomical friends of mine will remember a less detailed version of this discussion and the image from an email of mine in December 2006, so this is old news for them.

Images: © NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems, 2006

Good and bad news from the Archives nationales, Paris

In my post for 18 March I mentioned that the records for the United Nations International Refugee Organisation (IRO) have been transferred to the French national archives, the Archives nationales in Paris (see The UNHCR Archives and Records Section responds). The Archives nationales in Paris has confirmed that there are records, however, the news is a mixed blessing as neither the records or the finding aids are available online.

This is the text of the reply from the Archives nationales, Paris - Service de la Recherche a écrit :

Dear Mr. N ... ,
In response to your e-mail of April 12th, I inform you that the Archives nationales-site de Paris [does] keep in AJ 43 (O.I.R.) records concerning camps for refugees in Italy (Bari and Bagnoli).
-AJ/43/140 : in particular, a study by J. Barth, historian, about Bagnoli's camp, and refugees in Trieste and Veneto region ;
-AJ/43/1036 : in particular, people arrested by [the] Italian police displaced to the transit camp in Bari, January 1948 ;
-AJ/43/1040 : competitive sport in Bagnoli's camp, September 1950.

Unfortunately, neither the finding aid for AJ 43, nor the records are available on line.

Yours sincerely.
Thierry Pin

In French the IRO is known as the Organisation Internationale pour les Rėfugiės (OIR).

So, in fact, to make any headway on this path I will have to go to Paris in person! I can't say I am much surprised. And I am uncertain from Mr. Pin's reply that they have the records I need. The question is not going, that's easy, but the issue is to make the visit worthwhile from the point of view of research - if I forget something later it's not as if I can just drop in casually again the week after I come home. In conclusion, Constant Reader, I am quickly finding out that there is only so much one can do through the Internet from the other side of the world.

Schola Pietatis Antonio Vivaldi (Vivaldi's Women)

This morning, quite by accident, I found the Schola Pietatis Antonio Vivaldi (SPAV or Vivaldi's Women), a U.K. based, all female choir and orchestra. This morning I was wanting to play some music, however, being at my parent's house for Easter I have to use the DVD and TV as they don't have a separate sound system; turning on the same a performance of the Schola Pietatis Antonio Vivaldi was airing on ABC 1 in Sydney (for non-Australians, the equivalent of the BBC or PBS). Much intrigued I checked the TV guide and then Googling the group's name I found their Internet site.

The documentary on the TV was painfully short, a real teaser - 30 minutes. The music and the setting were rich, a performance of Vivaldi's Gloria, filmed in 2005 on location at the Santa Maria della Pieta in Venice. A great discovery, and if you like Baroque music its well worth a listen and a look!

The next step, of course, is to see if I can get any of their music or see the full documentary. I'll try the BBC, the ABC here, and my favourite record shop, and the SPAV - they of course will know where their music has been published. For information about the SPAV go to their site. There you will find excerpts from a performance, and from the documentary Vivaldi's women. If you are in the U.K. or Europe keep your eyes and ears for any concerts the SPAV may give.

If you want to know more about Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), Wikipedia has a good non-specialist article.

Image: © SPAV (used without permission), 2009.