Visibility and Line-Of-Sight Extinction Estimates in Gale Crater during the 2018/MY34 Global Dust Storm
Christina L. Smith, John E. Moores, Mark Lemmon, Scott D. Guzewich, Casey A. Moore, Douglas Ellison, Alain S. J. Khayat
(Submitted on 2 Oct 2019)
Northern line-of-sight extinction within Gale Crater during the 2018 global dust storm was monitored daily using MSL’s Navcam. Additional observations with Mastcam (north) and Navcam (all directions) were obtained at a lower cadence. Using feature identification and geo-referencing, extinction was estimated in all possible directions. Peak extinction of >1.1 km−1 was measured between sols 2086 and 2090, an order of magnitude higher than previous maxima. Northern and western directions show an initial decrease, followed by a secondary peak in extinction, not seen in column opacity measurements. Due to foreground topography, eastern direction results are provided only as limits, and southern results were indeterminable. Mastcam red and green filter results agree well, but blue filter results show higher extinctions, likely due to low signal-to-noise. Morning results are systematically higher than afternoon results, potentially indicative of atmospheric mixing.
Comments: Published in Geophysical Research Letters Special Issue: Studies of the 2018/Mars Year 34 Planet-Encircling Dust Storm, 17 pages, 4 figures
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Journal reference: Geophysical Research Letters, 2019, vol 46, 9414-9421
DOI: 10.1029/2019GL083788
Cite as: arXiv:1910.00986 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1910.00986v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Christina Smith
[v1] Wed, 2 Oct 2019 14:45:56 UTC (631 KB)
