Coloquio IRyA 2020.10.22 - Megan Schwamb
Channel: Coloquio IRyA
Date: 2020-10-28

Speaker info: Dr. Megan Schwamb, Lecturer, Queen's University Belfast.
https://megschwamb.com/
https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/megan-schwamb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Schwamb



Title: Exploring Mars with 150,000 Earthlings
Abstract:
Planet Four (http://www.planetfour.org) and Planet Four: Terrains (http://terrains.planetfour.org) are citizen science projects mining Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) images to explore how the south pole of Mars is sculpted by the never-ending cycle of freezing and thawing of exposed carbon dioxide ice. In the summer, carbon dioxide jets loft dust and dirt through cracks in the thawing carbon dioxide ice sheet to the surface where winds blow the material into the hundreds of thousands of dark fans observed from orbit. Planet Four enlists over 136,000 volunteers to map the sizes, shapes, and orientations of these fans in high resolution images. Planet Four is creating an unprecedented wind map of the south pole of Mars in order to probe how the Martian climate changes over time and is impacted year to year by dust storms and other global-scale events. Planet Four: Terrains, aims to study the distribution of the jet process across the south pole and identify new targets of interest for MRO. Over 12,000 people have helped identify the channels and pits (dubbed araneiforms) carved during the jet formation process. In this talk, I'll give an overview of Planet Four and Planet Four: Terrains and present the latest results from these projects