APOD: Solis Lacus: The Eye of Mars (2020 Oct 01)

[APOD Robot]

Solis Lacus: The Eye of Mars

Explanation: As telescopes around planet Earth watch, Mars is growing brighter in night skies, approaching its 2020 opposition on October 13. Mars looks like its watching too in this view of the Red Planet from September 22. Mars' disk is already near its maximum apparent size for earthbound telescopes, less than 1/80th the apparent diameter of a Full Moon. The seasonally shrinking south polar cap is at the bottom and hazy northern clouds are at the top. A circular, dark albedo feature, Solis Lacus (Lake of the Sun), is just below and left of disk center. Surrounded by a light area south of Valles Marineris, Solis Lacus looks like a planet-sized pupil, famously known as The Eye of Mars . Near the turn of the 20th century, astronomer and avid Mars watcher Percival Lowell associated the Eye of Mars with a conjunction of canals he charted in his drawings of the Red Planet. Broad, visible changes in the size and shape of the Eye of Mars are now understood from high resolution surface images to be due to dust transported by winds in the thin Martian atmosphere.

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[orin stepanek]

And I thought Mars' beard was turning white! He's pretty old you know!

[neufer]

Solis Planum

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<<Solis Planum is a planum on Mars which has a diameter of 1811.23 km. Its center latitude is 26.4 S and its center longitude is 270.33 E. Solis Planum was named after a classic albedo feature name, and its name was approved in 1973. Solis Lacus (26°S 275°E) is a dark feature on Mars. It was once called "Oculus" and is still commonly called "The Eye of Mars" because with the surrounding light area called Thaumasia it resembles the pupil of one. Solis Lacus is known for the variability of its appearance, changing its size and shape when dust storms occur.

Percival Lowell believed that it was the planetary capital of Mars due to the number of canals he claimed intersected at the region. In The Lost Worlds of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke had it as the landing site of the first robotic probe to Mars. In Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, the manned exploratory vessel Envoy lands just south of Solis Lacus.>>

<<Grok is a neologism coined by American writer Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. While the Oxford English Dictionary summarizes the meaning of grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment". 'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science and it means as little to us as color does to a blind man."

Robert A. Heinlein originally coined the term grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land as a Martian word that could not be defined in Earthling terms, but can be associated with various literal meanings such as "water", "to drink", "life", or "to live", and had a much more profound figurative meaning that is hard for terrestrial culture to understand because of its assumption of a singular reality.

According to the book, drinking water is a central focus on Mars, where it is scarce. Martians use the merging of their bodies with water as a simple example or symbol of how two entities can combine to create a new reality greater than the sum of its parts. The water becomes part of the drinker, and the drinker part of the water. Both grok each other. Things that once had separate realities become entangled in the same experiences, goals, history, and purpose. Within the book, the statement of divine immanence verbalized between the main characters, "Thou Art God", is logically derived from the concept inherent in the term grok.

Uses of the word in the decades after the 1960s are more concentrated in computer culture, such as a 1984 appearance in InfoWorld: "There isn't any software! Only different internal states of hardware. It's all hardware! It's a shame programmers don't grok that better.">>

[johnnydeep]

Solis Lacus: The Eye of Mars

Explanation: As telescopes around planet Earth watch, Mars is growing brighter in night skies, approaching its 2020 opposition on October 13. Mars looks like its watching too in this view of the Red Planet from September 22. Mars' disk is already near its maximum apparent size for earthbound telescopes, less than 1/80th the apparent diameter of a Full Moon. The seasonally shrinking south polar cap is at the bottom and hazy northern clouds are at the top. A circular, dark albedo feature, Solis Lacus (Lake of the Sun), is just below and left of disk center. Surrounded by a light area south of Valles Marineris, Solis Lacus looks like a planet-sized pupil, famously known as The Eye of Mars . Near the turn of the 20th century, astronomer and avid Mars watcher Percival Lowell associated the Eye of Mars with a conjunction of canals he charted in his drawings of the Red Planet. Broad, visible changes in the size and shape of the Eye of Mars are now understood from high resolution surface images to be due to dust transported by winds in the thin Martian atmosphere.

All I have to say is "what eye?". Is this supposed to be it? If so, I see instead a hand cupping an eight-ball. It even has fingers (or fingernails) on the left side!

Is This The Purported "Eye"

[neufer]

All I have to say is "what eye?". Is this supposed to be it?
If so, I see instead a hand cupping an eight-ball.
It even has fingers (or fingernails) on the left side!

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

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johnnydeep: Is This The Purported *Eye*

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Percival Lowell believed that Solis Lacus was the planetary capital of Mars due to the number of canals he claimed intersected at the region

---

<<Solis Lacus (26°S 85°W) is a dark feature on Mars. It was once called "Oculus" and is still commonly called "The Eye of Mars" because with the surrounding light area called Thaumasia it resembles the pupil of one. Solis Lacus is known for the variability of its appearance, changing its size and shape when dust storms occur.

Percival Lowell believed that it was the planetary capital of Mars due to the number of canals he claimed intersected at the region. In The Lost Worlds of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke had it as the landing site of the first robotic probe to Mars. In Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, the manned exploratory vessel Envoy lands just south of Solis Lacus.>>

[johnnydeep]

All I have to say is "what eye?". Is this supposed to be it?
If so, I see instead a hand cupping an eight-ball.
It even has fingers (or fingernails) on the left side!

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

---

johnnydeep: Is This The Purported *Eye*

---

Percival Lowell believed that Solis Lacus was the planetary capital of Mars due to the number of canals he claimed intersected at the region

---

<<Solis Lacus (26°S 85°W) is a dark feature on Mars. It was once called "Oculus" and is still commonly called "The Eye of Mars" because with the surrounding light area called Thaumasia it resembles the pupil of one. Solis Lacus is known for the variability of its appearance, changing its size and shape when dust storms occur.

Percival Lowell believed that it was the planetary capital of Mars due to the number of canals he claimed intersected at the region. In The Lost Worlds of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke had it as the landing site of the first robotic probe to Mars. In Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, the manned exploratory vessel Envoy lands just south of Solis Lacus.>>

Well, sure, if your telescope is poor and you draw in parts you can't really see

[neufer]

A new map of Barsoom by Oberon Zell

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Laser Altimeter Topographic Map over Shiaparelli’s 1886 Map

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Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute and Weekly Webzine Site
Volume 3937

Upon the edges of plateaus that once had marked the shore-line of a noble continent I passed above the lonely monuments of that ancient prosperity, the sad, deserted cities of old Barsoom. Even in their ruins there is a grandeur and magnificence that still have power to awe a modern man. Down towards the lowest sea bottoms other ruins mark the tragic trail that that ancient civilization had followed in pursuit of the receding waters of its ocean to where the last city finally succumbed, bereft of commerce, shorn of power, to fall at last an easy victim to the marauding hordes of fierce, green tribesmen, whose descendants now are the sole rulers of many of those deserted sea bottoms.

<<Accurate placement of these ancient dead cities from the time of the Orovars required my creating an accurate map of ancient Mars/Barsoom with all those oceans in place. The great Hellas and Argyre Impacts that blew away most of the northern hemisphere, split open the Valles Marineris, and erupted all those immense volcanoes, are currently believed to have occurred around three billion years ago. Since Mars has no tectonic plates to move continents around and raise new mountain ranges, elevations would not have changed in the past several million years. Therefore I felt confident in using the MOLA Laser Altimeter Topographic Map of Mars to establish the basic sea-level (at MOLA’s 0-meter elevation) for the time of the Orovars. I superimposed the MOLA map over Shiaparelli’s 1886 Mercator projection map—which I turned over to place north at the top, and removed all of Shiaparelli’s place names.>>

[MarkBour]

All I have to say is "what eye?". Is this supposed to be it? If so, I see instead a hand cupping an eight-ball. It even has fingers (or fingernails) on the left side!

I like it. The "Pool Shark's Palm" of Mars.