Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Tuesday, November 27th.  The sun will rise at 7:55.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 10 minutes, setting at 5:05.   The moon, 1 day before full, will set at 7:53 tomorrow morning.

Last Tuesday NPR’s Joe Palca revealed that John Grotzinger the Principal Investigator for the Curiosity Rover mission on Mars had let slip that they may soon announce an earth shaking discovery.  The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA have been backpedaling ever since.  The announcement may come next week Monday.  The discovery may have been made with the SAM instrument, the most complex chemical lab sent into space.  SAM is an acronym for Sample Analysis at Mars.  It is hoped that SAM might detect organic compounds.  Maybe it has.  The Viking missions in 1976 failed to detect organics.  It’s thought for organics to survive they would have to be below the surface shielded from the sun’s x-rays that get in through Mars’ thin atmosphere.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Scoop marks at RockNest. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems. Did the sample in question come from there?

When the Bad Astronomer Phil Plait posted his take on this last week.  I responded that I thought it was a discarded Earth Bar wrapper.   Think about it.