“La sabiduría de la vida consiste en la eliminación de lo no esencial. En reducir los problemas de la filosofía a unos pocos solamente: el goce del hogar, de la vida, de la naturaleza, de la cultura”.
Lin Yutang
Cervantes
Hoy es el día más hermoso de nuestra vida, querido Sancho; los obstáculos más grandes, nuestras propias indecisiones; nuestro enemigo más fuerte, el miedo al poderoso y a nosotros mismos; la cosa más fácil, equivocarnos; la más destructiva, la mentira y el egoísmo; la peor derrota, el desaliento; los defectos más peligrosos, la soberbia y el rencor; las sensaciones más gratas, la buena conciencia, el esfuerzo para ser mejores sin ser perfectos, y sobretodo, la disposición para hacer el bien y combatir la injusticia dondequiera que esté.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES Don Quijote de la Mancha.
30 de diciembre de 2018
This Icy Crater Near Mars' North Pole Is a Winter Wonderland (Photos)
This image from the European
Space Agency's Mars Express satellite shows Korolev crater, located near
Mars' northern pole. The crater's coordinates are 165 degrees E, 73
degrees N on the martian surface.
Images of an "ever-icy" Martian crater reveal a distant yet mesmerizing winter wonderland.
What appears to be a bowl of fresh snow in this imagery released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday (Dec. 20) is actually an ice deposit chilling the air moving over it, agency officials said in a statement.
Ice is found in the deepest parts of this formation, called Korolev
Crater, and as air moves over the ice, it cools down and sinks,
producing cold air right above the chilly deposit.
This image from ESA's Mars
Express shows Korolev crater, and is composed of five observations, each
one from a different orbit of the spacecraft. It's High Resolution
Stereo Camera (HRSC) instrument took the data that formed the image.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
ESA officials called this phenomenon a "cold trap" because the air acts as a shield to keep the crater "permanently icy."
Korolev Crater is 82 kilometers across (51 miles) and found just south
of terrain that wraps around Olympia Undae, Mars' northern polar cap.
The crater floor can reach depths of two kilometers (1.2 miles) below
its rim, deeper than Earth's Grand Canyon.
This image shows the landscape
in and around Korolev crater, a feature 82 kilometers across (51 miles)
found on Mars' northern lowlands. The bold white box indicates the
region that the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera imaged over
orbits 18042, 5726, 5692, 5654, and 1412. The elevation of the terrain
is denoted by the blue colors indicated by the bar at the bottom.
Credit: NASA MGS MOLA Science Team
The High Resolution Stereo Camera on the space agency's Mars Express
satellite captured five different "strips" of the crater, each one
coming from a different orbit of the spacecraft. By combining them, a
single image was produced.
Mars Express has a connection with Christmas — the mission first fired
its main engine to enter into Martian orbit on Dec. 25, 2003, after a
roughly six-month journey from Earth. Mars Express is the agency's first
spacecraft to explore another planet, but its high-resolution
stereoscopic camera and mineralogical mapping spectrometer originated
with an earlier mission called Mars 96, which failed shortly after
launch on Nov. 16, 1996.
