Picture Credit: JPL/NASA
Remember the Mars Rovers named "Spirit" and "Opportunity"? They are still doing great science, thirty-one months after landing on the red planet. The two rovers were projected to have a longevity of three months --after that, all bets were off.
JPL scientists are getting excited about the Opportunity rover reaching Victoria Crater. The picture above shows the waypoints and current posititon of the rover.
Picture Credit: JPL/NASA
The next picture highlights some of the features visible from the rover as it nears the 800 metre wide crater.
Going to the cottage this weekend? Take a look overhead just after dark to see our friend "Hercules". This constellation is easily identified by looking for the keystone shape made by its four brightest stars. Along one side of the keystone, look for a faint fuzzy star-like object known as M13. Good skies and good eyes will just be able to see it. M13 is an easy binocular target and totally incredible in a larger telescope. What is M13? Imagine a few hundred thousand stars packed into a small ball. If you were on a planet inside this globular cluster of stars, you could read by the starlight. Cosmologists have postulated that M13 and other visible globular star clusters may be the cores of other galaxies, consumed by our Milky Way galaxy, many eons ago. Burp!
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