Welcome to http:/www.handsonuniverse.org/activities/Explorations/MarsProfiles/

Challenge: Make a Model of Mars.  Use these images of Mars to help you make a model of Mars by drawing the features on an orange! Draw the dark features by using a non-toxic black marker.  Make the polar caps with white Play-Doh.  You might even want to put cloves into the dark areas of the orange so you can use it for a fragrant holiday decoration!   
Note: Images were taken in August and Sept. of 2003 with an Apogee AP7p CCD with 24 micron pixels on the Univ. of Chicago's Yerkes Obs. 24 inch telescope.  In these images North is up and East is to the left as if you were able to see Mars this clearly by looking at it in the sky from Earth's northern hemisphere.  

Link to double size view. Link to view taken with a SBIG ST7 CCD which is a CCD camera that has smaller pixels (9 microns).

Challenge: Color Gels and Imaging Filters.  Next make a filter card and view your Mars model through red, green, and blue filter gels.  These images of Mars were taken with filters, I, V, and U.  The I (infrared) is 'beyond the red' part of the spectrum, the V (visual) is right in the middle of the visible spectrum and comparable to green, and the U (ultraviolet) is beyond the blue part of the spectrum.  It is interesting how the features of Mars are highlighted or seem to disappear in the various filters.  Explain your observations.

Link to view of Mars in red, green and blue filters taken with the SBIG ST7 CCD.

 
Use red, green and blue theatre gels and fancy or plain paper punches.  Ask your HS theater dept. for colored gels.

Images were taken August-September, 2003 with The Univ. of Chicago Yerkes Observatory 24 inch telescope and an Apogee AP7p CCD.

Model Globes of Mars * Isocohedron Model of Mars * Sky and Telescope's Mars Profiler  to figure out which features are in view. * HOU Fts Images of Mars *  Times in the image names are in UT (Universal Time).
* SOFIA Active Astronomy and Kit *

Back to HOU Home.  Back to Explorations.

Funded by NSF through Hands-On Universe (HOU) and NASA through NASA IDEAS and SOFIA and NASA's Saturday Academy for Space Science at Chicago State University.  Comments, suggestions, questions?  Contact Vivian Hoette vhoette@yerkes.uchicago.edu.