Science Pics of the Week: Martian tourism is poster-perfect

Sunday, May 17, 2015, 4:02 PM - SpaceX gives us a poster-perfect look at Mars tourism, an Earth-radar look at Venus, and an astronaut gifts us with us with a view of the stars. It's Science Pics of the Week!

SpaceX's Poster-Perfect Look At Life On Mars

Someday, maybe soon or possibly quite far into the future, humans will be living on the planet Mars and touring its amazing wonders.

To give us a little preview of what that might be like, SpaceX released these three 'retro-future' travel posters, each featuring a unique aspect of Mars that would certainly merit taking some time out of a busy schedule to explore.

Credit: SpaceX

In order, left to right, are:

• a jet-pack tour of Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the solar system,

• taking a lift to the summit of Olympus Mons, the largest of any of the known volcanoes in our solar system, and

• cruising around the planet on the surface of Phobos, the larger of Mars' two small moons

Check out SpaceX's Flickr account for the glorious originals of these posters.

Piercing the Clouds of Venus from Earth

Turn most telescopes here on Earth at the planet Venus and you'll be rewarded with a very bright object in your view. However, ultimately, you may be disappointed by the fact that all you're seeing of the planet is nearly featureless blanket of cloud-tops.

Some telescopes, though, aren't limited by these clouds. The Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico, picks up radio sources from space, but it's also capable of sending out radio signals, which can act as radar when they bounce of relatively nearby objects. The astronomers there have used this recently to image asteroids, and twice already they've aimed this radar at the planet Venus.

Credit: B. Campbell, Smithsonian, et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF, Arecibo

According to Astronomy Now:

The radar signals from Arecibo passed through both our planet’s atmosphere and the atmosphere of Venus, where they hit the surface and bounced back to be received by the GBT in a process known as bistatic radar.
This capability is essential to study not only the surface as it appears now, but also to monitor it for changes. By comparing images taken at different periods in time, scientists hope to eventually detect signs of active volcanism or other dynamic geologic processes that could reveal clues to Venus’s geologic history and subsurface conditions.

To see Arecibo's latest look at an asteroid, check out the radar images it captured of 1999 FN53, which caused some unjustified concern early this week.

It's Full of Stars! Terry Virts' Amazing View of Space

We see plenty of images taken from the International Space Station, as the crew members show off their vantage point of Earth on a daily basis. However, they don't often give us a view like Terry Virts' did on Friday:

The view includes some aurora and airglow (similar to auroras, but simply based on everyday interactions with Earth's upper atmosphere and ultraviolet light from the Sun), but as you watch all the brightly lit cities pass by underneath those phenomena, consider this:

If we substantially dimmed those lights, so as to reduce the amount of light pollution that surrounded our communities, not only would we consume less energy, nearly all of us could enjoy this kind of view right from our homes here on Earth.

For more information on light pollution and how we can reclaim our night sky, check out the website of the International Dark-Sky Association.