Communications in Mars Observations

The OAA Mars Section, Japan

No.273

--- 25 June 2003---

 

   This is a belated edition of CMO #273 which should have been issued in June 2003. We are very sorry we could not afford to keep the publications of the CMO bulletin for one year since June 2003. The Editor in charge (M MINAMI) went on an expedition for the Mars observation on 23 June to Okinawa, and was more readily than expected too blessed with the good weather condition every night to write up the OAA Review. Furthermore we continued to be given a lot of observations from around the world of too high quality to review out. Letters to the Editor were also too enormous in number to sort out. During the apparition however the CMO Web have been active (thanks to Masami MURAKAMI) throughout to upload the up-to-dated Mars Images and Director’s Notes timely.

It is thus not until the planet went away that we became to restart the edition and publication of the CMO, but even then we are far behind in printing out the paper versions of the CMO. We sincerely hope the readers will be patient to us and wait for our recovery.

(15 June 2004)


From #273, we cite 3 articles

  CMO No 273 contains:

1.            CMO 2003 Great Mars Report #08 deals with the observations made during a one month period from 16 May 2003 to 15 June 2003: The Martian season proceeded from 186°Ls to 204°Ls and the apparent diameter increased from 10.7” to 14.2”. More than thirty observers joined (including about ten Japanese observers), and some detailed detections of the markings were possibly made around the areas of Solis L and Ausonia as well as at Elysium. Some dust disturbances were observed near Solis L and Eos, and it became apparent that the area around Ausonia Borealis (Trinacria) had been quite faded (perhaps due to the fallout of dust in 2001). The Aetheria dark patch also showed up in the final deformed form observed in 2001. The summit of Arsia Mons near the terminator was clouded by the upslope white cloud, while Olympus Mons was clear as expected.

2.          Letters to the Editor records a number of emails received during the one-month period from 25 May to 24 June 2003. Here are included the emails from 34 persons. Most are related with the update observations and techniques (observations being here linked to the CMO Mars Gallery). Some are concerned with the sad news of Tom Cave’s death.

1.          Ten Years Ago (#94) given by HIKI (in Japanese) reviews CMO #134 published on 25 June 1993. The planet was going away, and the 17th OAA 1993 Report dealt with the period 16 May to 15 June during which the season went from 080°Ls to 093°Ls. The apparent diameter went down from 5.7” to 5.0”, and so the final stage of the 1992/1993 apparition. J WARELL and others were still active as in addition to 4 Japanese observers. E SIEGEL and R SCHMUDE observed that there were seen a washed-out slit at the rather northern part of M Acidalium. The issue reviewed the paper by SMITH and SMITH (Icarus 16 (1972) 502) which summarised the behaviours of Hellas, Elysium and Nix Olympica throughout the Martian year based on the photographic data from 1924 to 1971. The LtE recorded Letters from SCHMUDE, CAVE, WARELL, SIEGEL and IWASAKI. An aftermath description of the SIEGELs visit to Takefu, Fukui and Mikuni was also made by Mn.    

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