Polarized clouds on Mars, further evidence for liquid water in Solis Lacus, Mars?

[exoscientist]

Posted to sci.astro:<br /><br /><br />From: rgregoryclark@yahoo.com (Robert Clark)<br />Newsgroups: sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary,sci.physics,sci.geo.meteorology<br />Subject: Polarized clouds on Mars, further evidence for liquid water in Solis Lacus, Mars?<br />NNTP-Posting-Host: 147.31.162.226<br /><br />At the October, 2004 40th Vernadsky-Brown Conference was presented a<br />report that observed polarization in the refelected light from clouds<br />on Mars by the Hubble telescope:<br /><br />35 - POLARIZATION CLOUDS IN THE MARTIAN ATMOSPHERE: HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS. V. Kaydash, Yu. Shkuratov, M. Kreslavsky, G. Videen, M. Wolff, J. Bell.<br />The 40th Vernadsky/Brown Microsymposium on Comparative Planetology.<br />October 11-13, 2004, Moscow Russia<br />http://www.geokhi.ru/~planetology/theses/35_kaydash_et_al.pdf<br /> <br /> Polarization of light is known to be produced by round liquid water<br />drops as opposed to randomly oriented multi-faceted ice crystals. The<br />process is described here:<br /><br />Estimate of the global distribution of stratiform supercooled liquid<br />water clouds using the LITE lidar.<br />Robin J. Hogan, Mukunda D. Behera,1 Ewan J. O'Connor, and Anthony J.<br />Illingworth<br />GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 31, L05106,<br />doi:10.1029/2003GL018977, 2004<br />http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/clouds/publications/lite_mixedphase.pdf<br /><br />Depolarization ratio<br />http://lidar.ssec.wisc.edu/papers/pp_thes/node20.htm<br /><br /><br /> The figures shown in the Vernadsky/Brown report show the clouds with<br />the high polarization extend over the Solis Lacus region. The<br />observations were taken in southern Summer on Mars in 2003. Earlier<br />Vikin <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>