MSIP final report

Charleston Middle School Core B Science

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Introduction

This is the final report by Charleston Middle School Gold Teamís Core B Science class under the supervision of Mr. McCollum. This report contains our findings and deductions following our acceptance by the MSIP to use the THEMIS camera. We hope that the information we have acquired will aid us and others as we continue to pursue this and other topics.

Question

Do storms and clouds tend to form in certain areas, along certain latitude bands, or over particular terrain?

Hypothesis

When we sent in our proposal, we hypothesized that storms tended to form around Hellas Planitia and Valles Marineris, as well as just off the northern edge of Tharsis. We believed that this may be due to the collision of air at different temperatures and pressures.

Data

The image we received yielded little as far as to the location of storms. It did, however, impress upon us the difficulty of capturing clouds images as clouds do not remain stationary and the chances of catching one are low. Although our own image did not aid us, other images, which we found on the THEMIS image gallery website (http://themis.asu.edu/gallery/), have provided us with cloud images as well as their locations. Having studied these, we felt that the best way to display our data in a way that would improve our understanding would be to plot the points on a topographic map of Mars. Do to technical difficulties; we have decided to change that.

Figure 1 shows the locations of recorded storms on Mars. The red line shows an area where it seems that they tend to appear. The green circle shows a dense area in terms of number of storms. The dotted orange lines shows other storm patterns.

Figure 2 shows the same indicators drawn on a topographical map of Mars. Notice that the lines tend to follow the boundary between the northern lowlands and the southern highlands. The circle of dense storms occurs just north of Tharsis. One of the orange lines follows Valles Marineris almost exactly.

Results

The data we have gathered seems to support our theory. Storms and clouds on Mars tend to form on the boundary of the highlands and lowlands as well as over Valles Marineris. We were, it seems, incorrect in our theory that storms tend to form over Hellas Planitia. We are not, as yet, completely sure why this is. We have insufficient data to say that our theory is absolutely correct, but we believe that it has strong support. We hope that this information may increase the chances of researchers spotting storms in the future.

References

Themis digital image gallery (http://themis.asu.edu/gallery/)

The MSIP program