Abstracts for the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference next month are now available (thanks to Alex for the alert). They are available at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006. I have yet to browse through them, but I intend to do so soon (browsing the web on a Palm does have its disadvantages...).

My abstract is "Equatorial Faculae on Titan: Distribution and Orientation" with Alfred McEwen, Zibi Turtle, Stephanie Fussner, and Cassini ISS Team. I don't have a link yet, but just search for J.E. Perry in the author list. Look for an abstract in the Saturn system (or something like that) poster session. If you read carefully, you will note that I could resist interpreting one of our faculae as a cryovolcano (hey, if VIMS can have a squiggly bright feature called a cryovolcano, why can't we).

Can I just editorialize on a general LPSC planning problem...look at the schedule for Wednesday afternoon. There are concurrent sessions on:

Spirit and Opportunity results
Saturn satellites and rings results
Deep Impact results

ALL AT ONCE!! What the heck am I going to do??

--Emily

hmmm, cloning?

BTW, the link to my abstract is http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/2170.pdf

If cloning doesn't work, how about renting a couple of video cameras and conscripting two people? (Since I won't be there, I can safely suggest this course of action without becoming one of them.)

Huzzah! Sifting through those should shut me up for about two weeks (much to Alex's pleasure...)

Emily, what I do in a similar situation at DPS meetings is to leave my tape recorder running in one lecture room while I dash into another one to attend a second lecture in person. This leads to occasional peculiar looks, but it also allows you to take in a good deal more information than you would otherwise (and, so far, it hasn't led to my tape recorder being stolen, scientists being ascetic types).

Best LPSC ... Everrr! But for the reason mentioned by Emily, also the worst. Alas, I will not be there this year.

Phl

Well, Emily -- a partial solution would be if you could get TPS to hire me as a reporter/analyst, and I'll cover some of the sessions you can't cover...



-the other Doug

But note that Spirit and Opportunity is the second session on that topic so not the top-level results, and the Saturn talks ease into the topic while DI starts with the overview results. So some creative room-swapping will solve the problem. What can you do... Wednesday is a big day!

How much is a flight from the UK

It's when I read line-ups like that that I want to throw in the medical e-learning town and enjoy the thrills of conference coffee and space reporting. Damn you mortgage - damn you to hell!

Doug

One might consider checking these full-session PDFs from time to time in the days leading up to the conference. The reason is that, given past history, a few of the original files are usually updated (e.g., an abstract was corrupted during the PDF distillation process, etc.).

yeah, the concurrent sesssions are going to be a problem on Wednesday, but ultimately, I will be in the Cassini sessions. I'll try to take good notes if that's helpful...

Here are a few abstracts I found interesting:


The South Polar Hot Spot on Enceladus
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/2252.pdf
Describes analysis preformed on CIRS data of Enceladus from not just the Rev11 encounter and the south polar region (though results and models for that data are discussed), but also thermal inertia results from near the anti-Saturn point and the north pole. They estimate that the average heat flow from the south polar region is 10% of Io's global average.
I should note that the main author is a fellow UMSF member.

RADAR Imaging of Giant Longitudinal Dunes: Namib Desert (Earth) and the Belet Sand Sea (Titan)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/1249.pdf
Fairly self explanatory. Abstract provides a short analysis of the longitundinal dunes found on Titan, particularly in Belet
Visible view of longituninal dunes in Namibia:
http://maps.google.com/?ll=-24.277638,15.0...57,0.451813&t=h

Crateriform Structures on Titan
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/1659.pdf
Discussion of crater-like features seen by RADAR, particularly in T7 and T8.

Titan's Enigmatic 5-Micron-bright terrain
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/2319.pdf
Analysis using VIMS data of Hotei Arcus and Tui Regio, regions south of Xanadu that appear bright at 5-microns

Diapir-Induced Reorientation of Enceladus
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/2113.pdf
I haven't read through this yet, but I thought I would point out vexgizmo's abstract

Patterns of Fracture and Tectonic Convergence near the South Pole of Enceladus
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/2182.pdf
This is an analysis of the tectonic structures observed by ISS within the south polar region of Enceladus. The authors conclude that the boundary of the south polar region, marked by Y-shaped discontinuities and cusps, represents a convergent tectonic boundary (complete with thrust-faulted ridge belts at the cusps) resulting from the flattening of the rotation axis.

Shapes of the Saturnian Satellites: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/1639.pdf
Physical Characteristics and Possible Accretionary Origin for Saturn's Small Satellites: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/2289.pdf
New estimates on the sizes of Saturn's satellites (Hyperion not presented here, work still in progress)

There are also quite a few abstracts on possible interior models for Enceladus, including vexgizmo's. I haven't quite read them yet.

Distribution of Icy Particles Across Enceladus' Surface
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/1766.pdf
Modeling work on VIMS' Enceladus data. They are able to show that water ice grain size decreases with increasing age.

Topographic features of Ithaca Chasma, Tethys
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/1749.pdf
DEMs of Ithaca Chasma. The canyon appears to be 2-3 km deep but the flanks are up to 6 km taller than surrounding plains. Link between Ithaca Chasma and Odysseus proven incorrect given the significant differences in ages between Ithaca Chasma (100-200 My younger than the surrounding plains) and Odysseus (much younger).

Obviously there is more to LPSC than Cassini, good topics of discussion in other parts of the this forum include the results from Hayubasa, Deep Impact, and MER. I've glanced through the Deep Impact and Hayubasa stuff, and they certainly look interesting.

I well recall this sharp image of the Namib Desert from Gemini 5 in 1965:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/...es/65-45579.jpg

The caption:

The navigators and explorers of 500 years ago had a great fear of sailing along the hostile Atlantic coasts of Africa. Such fears hastened the discovery and European occupation of the Americas. This view clearly shows 400 kilometers of "Skeleton Coast" of Southwest Africa. Constant northerly winds cause the development of parallel sand dunes which, in some cases, are over 200 kilometers long and over 300 meters high. Seifs, as they are called, are rarely found and parallel the wind direction; most dunes are transverse to the wind direction. A combination of wind-blown sand from the Namib Desert and the strong northward Benguela Current cause the development of sand hooks or capes. This dry and hostile area with an equally hostile name receives about 100 centimeters of rain a century. (S65-45579; Gemini V.)

And check out these dune images in Algeria from Gemini 7:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/mis...ni_7_page1.html

Note that four full-session files were updated today (2/1/06), or at least that was the case for me since I downloaded them a couple of days ago.

Thanks so much for posting the abstracts found here:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006

Why do I get the impression after reading the PDF file on Titan that the principal scientists have no idea what they are either looking at or actually know what the surface of Titan is made up of. Interesting to hear from those who were at the actual meeting and heard what was actually presented.

The following abstract seems interesting: Enceladus' Interior and Geysers - Possibility for Hydrothermal Geochemistry and N2 Production

After the discovery of the Enceladean plumes the scientists were apparently puzzled by the absence of detectable ammonia in the plumes. This abstract seems to suggest that the temperature inside Enceladus was/is substantially higher than that required to just keep a mixture of ammonia/water barely liquid. They suggest temperatures on the order of 800 K early in the moon's history. This would explain the lack of NH3 detected as it would have been broken down to N2 and H2 long ago. Later hydration of the silicates in the core would have raised the temperatures even higher.
The same mechanism was also suggested for the source of nitrogen in Titan's atmosphere.

Sorry but that image isn't of the Skeleton Coast at all. That is Walvis Bay and Swakopmund right in the middle with the dunes in Nambib Naukluft National Park to the south. The Skeleton Coast begins well north of the picture. The dunes are big though. Well do I know, having climbed all over some of them looking for Dune Larks.

tty

Very interesting indeed. Fascinating, in fact, that the authors observed that the N2 observations might be consistent with ammonia dissociation @ 25 deg C & 1 bar pressure...heat + liquid water + a chemical energy source=???

Starting to wonder if an Enceladus submersible might be an easier overall engineering proposition to tackle before trying to dive Europa! The subsurface environment looks very tempting, the ice may well be much thinner in the southern polar areas, and the ambient radiation levels are a lot less challenging.

Thanks for the link, V.P.!

Hmm...In your unofficial and purely speculative opinion, is Titan perhaps more like a 'frozen Venus' volcanically than a 'frozen Earth' (i.e., thick crust, and possibly little or no plate tectonics)? The faculae seem to be analogous in some ways to Venusian features like coronae.

Might stretch the analogy even further by noting that Venus & Titan both have dense, opaque atmospheres and no oceans of the appropriate local solvents in the modern era...are there some potential causal relationships here?

Posts related to the new LPSC policies (or their policies in general) have been moved to: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2229

I'm surprised though that no threads have been started related to other abstract topics, like Hayubasa.

For those who may not have noticed, several full-session files have been updated since I posted this, though I don't think any of them are Cassini-related.

Just go to ftp://ftp.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/lpsc2006/ and sort on the "Modified" date field for a listing.

Alex does this happen when abstracts are accepted beyond the official deadline or simply modifications to already accepted abstracts?


Bob Clark

It's probably due to a variety of reasons. I suspect some of the full-session files may have been corrupted during the complilation process or, as you suggest, some abstracts may have been modified. In any event, I just noticed some of the files had new dates, something that has happened with LPSCs. In fact, I notified the conference organizers that one of this year's full-session files was corrupted, and it was subsequently replaced.