October 1, 2019
Oct. 1, 2019 It’s spring in the northern hemisphere on Mars. Actually, as of today, it’s pretty close to northern summer solstice, but the recent crop of released HiRISE images mostly come from the spring season. Northern polar dunes on […]
August 28, 2019
Aug. 28, 2019 So I was wasting time looking for dune fields on Mars and I came across a great CTX image that’s just riddled with dust devil tracks. Most of the time that’s all you see, but sometimes you […]
August 22, 2019
Aug. 22, 2019 Yeah, yeah, I should be working. But I had to do this. I found a heart❤️ on Mars made by dust devils: The wind blows dust devils around, so sometimes they meander this way and that. […]
August 21, 2019
Aug. 21, 2019 Trolling through the HiRISE image catalog, I came across some dunes that look a bit like bacteria. (Well okay, they look like some sort of microbe to my eye, which is highly untrained in looking at microbes, […]
August 5, 2019
August 5, 2019 It’s been a while since I posted anything. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I’m involved in so many projects that many things I love are being shoved aside for whatever has to be dealt […]
July 11, 2019
July 11, 2019 This is Part 5 of a series on my dust devil fieldwork in 2019 (see Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4). We came back home a couple of weeks ago. I’d say […]
June 16, 2019
June 16, 2019 This is Part 4 of a series on my dust devil fieldwork in 2019 (see Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3). The last post was a short one. That’s partly because I’m short on time, […]
June 12, 2019
June 12, 2019 This is Part 3 of a series on my dust devil fieldwork in 2019 (see Part 1 | Part 2). We’re here, we’re really here. I have a team and wonderful instruments and everybody is awesome and […]
May 10, 2019
May 10, 2019 (This is Part 2 of a series on my summer 2019 dust devil fieldwork. See previous post Part 1.) Today my colleague Steve Metzger and I drove out to a playa in Nevada to test some of […]
April 26, 2019
I saw an article today linked by the International Society for Aeolian Research‘s Facebook page, on the dangers of dust being lofted in Earth’s youngest desert, the Aralkum Desert in Kazakhstan. It’s where the Aral Sea used to be, decades […]
April 23, 2019
April 22, 2019 Hey. So last fall I found out that some colleagues and I got our dust devil proposal funded (I’m the PI, which means I’m the one in charge.) My initial reaction included elation. Relief. Joy. 🤗🎉🎈🥂🎊 We’d […]
March 4, 2019
On Earth, really old windblown dunes don’t usually survive long enough to become part of the geologic rock record. Dunes are made of unconsolidated sand, which is easily eroded by just about anything, so it takes special circumstances to keep […]