Personal blog, about Mars and Martian things on Earth, Space and Ancient Engineers and Mysteries. Founder of Areo Info LLC: Mars in better colors for humans.
California
Joined June 2011
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My free areoHDR app with daily new Perseverance Mars Rover images is now released also for Android phones & tablets! The only app showing Mars photos in high dynamic intensity range (HDR) utilizing the full 12 bits camera sensor data compared to normal 8 bit JPEGs. For iPhone & iPad and also Vision Pro it is already available since more than a year. Free on the Android store: play.google.com/store/apps/d… and on the iPhone app store: apps.apple.com/app/areohdr/i…
Those filaments between galaxy clusters are giant electric currents at magnitudes of literally billions of billions of Amperes (1E19 A) visible due to their synchrotron emission of the spiraling electrons inside the Birkeland Currents (field-aligned currents) informally often called flux tubes or radio jets. A new calibration method for radio images from @LOFAR revealed them now in never-before-seen details! 📷 "Pushing the frontiers of low-frequency radio astronomy: An ultra-deep sub-arcsecond LOFAR image of ELAIS-N1" arxiv.org/abs/2611.06152
More about those Birkeland Currents creating glowing plasma filaments in space in these videos in various levels of details, for the general public or also for those with electrical engineering background: youtu.be/ESKOjfMKaMQ and youtu.be/bCFvNIGkbKw and youtu.be/MS_GQNGpEos and youtu.be/QBsBUypc1VE
What was the reason for the decline of the bronze age of water valves in central Europe? The Romans in Germany and Britain had fancy hot and cold water pipe installations and then it was left rotting in the ground. A switch to metric can't explain as the expensive metal would have just been reused.
Quote: "In the De Aquis, Frontinus addresses the standardization of 15 pipe sizes by diameter, circumference and flow capacity. These pipe standards were used throughout the Roman Empire". Source: valvemagazine.com/articles/a…
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Unique moment at JPL's Mars Yard on Oct 21: I could see a real Moon Rover! As today confirmed, the MAGGIE test rover, originally a twin of the 2012 landed Curiosity Mars Rover, will be the vehicle to be landed in 2028 on the Moon. MAGGIE: Mars Automated Giant Gizmo for Integrating Engineering. I hope they will publish some raw test images from the color cameras on it taken at the Mars Yard in sunlight so we can compare it with the light conditions at the lunar south pole. New name: Promise. More details: nasa.gov/mission/promise
New awards. New mission updates. More progress toward a Moon Base.
We're advancing commercial lunar deliveries, a nuclear-powered rover, launch and orbital transfer services, and infrastructure to support a sustained human presence on the Moon: nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-a…
In case people are looking now for relocation destinations since this week: Here a few real views on Mars by Perseverance Rover from this month. More daily real non-AI Mars images: areo.info
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Took Tesla supervised full self driving (FSD v14.3.13) down Lombard Street in San Francisco yesterday: Impressively smooth the whole way after figuring out how to convince it to follow it as the navigation avoided this slow section.
If you own a self-driving capable Tesla and haven’t used FSD it in the past year, you can get 1 month free with this link: tesla.com/get-app/referral?c…
Shoutout to @iammartinstrayd for the ultimate FSD track: "Let My Car Drive By Itself Tonight" on teapawt.net/iammartinstrayd/status…
Same video in better colors and HDR: youtube.com/watch?v=qZiMA8X9…
ATT: @elonmusk @SpaceX @Teslaconomics
Let my car drive by itself tonight 👇
IF YOU OWN A SELF DRIVING CAR
Did you hear the song
It's unofficial till it's playing in every @Tesla @ElonMuskAOC @Tsegi777 @ElonMuskPD
Let my car drive by itself tonight 👇
youtu.be/R7rV0GR4JoQ?si=67xf…
In case anyone is wondering about the display number: I switched to km/h, a nice Tesla feature as it also shows the speed limit sign below it converted to km/h and a small mph value. The video was recorded on Android in HDR and then trimmed with quicktime on the Mac. Apparently the conversion here on X has some optimization potential as the colors came out pale while on youtube it's much better.
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Scary Halloween underlit ghost cyclists in Palo Alto yesterday. But successfully detected and evaded by supervised FSD on my 2024 Model 3! Anyone who likes to experience supervised FSD on a capable Tesla and haven't used it in the recent year can get 1 month free with this link: tesla.com/get-app/referral?c…
🔉public domain "Night in a Graveyard, 1985": archive.org/details/night-in…
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Shady figures during Halloween on Mars visible in photos taken two days ago with Navcam and Watson on Perseverance Rover and a bone-like looking white shiny rock. You can see all those daily Mars images in my free areoHDR app on Android and iPhone, now in the updated version also on iPhone Duo! More pictures from that mission day 2023 on Mars: areo.info/mars20/ecams/2023, areoHDR for iPhone: apps.apple.com/app/areohdr/i…, areoHDR for Android:
play.google.com/store/apps/d…
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My guess about the white shiny mineral would be polished Calcium Feldspar (plagioglase feldspar, anorthite, CaAl₂Si₂O₈) as that was the material identified in a previously nearby analyzed rock with similar appearance. 📷en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldsp…
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Yesterday at the 2026 International Mars Society Convention at USC by @TheMarsSociety, Ron Levin explained the improved Viking Lander Labeled Release (LR) Experiments which was unfortunately not placed on Mars in 1976 but which would be crucial to provide the definitive answer about whether there is existing life on Mars or not: A Chiral Labeled Release Instrument for In Situ Detection of Extant Life, originally proposed by his father Gil Levin, who was the Principal Investigator for the original LR experiments on the two Viking Landers. In 1976 only an evenly distribution of left and right handed nutrient molecules lactate and alanine was used. If two separate experiments are deployed, one with only right-handed sugar and left-handed aminoacids, like all life on Earth can metabolize, and one with the mirrored variant of those molecules, which are unusable for life on Earth, the result would provide the answer. Because abiotic chemistry would result in the same with both, while any Earth-like biological activity would only be active on the first. 2012 paper by Gil Levin: ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/20…
Ron Levin's presentation "Chiral Labeled Release: An Experiment to Irrefutably Prove Extant Microbial Life on Mars" at this year's 2026 Mars Society International Convention is available on @TheMarsSociety's live stream recording starting at 2:13:05: youtube.com/live/0goBJnT2jyE…
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In case anyone likes to try out the new beta release of my Mars images areoHDR app, which includes support for the iPhone Duo, here the links to the test flight download. With this link you even have free access to all mission days and also all Viking Lander images which otherwise need a subscription!
iOS 26 / 27: testflight.apple.com/join/pY…
iOS 18: testflight.apple.com/join/Du…
Anyone with a self-driving capable Tesla who hasn't used Full Self-Driving (Supervised) in the recent 12 months can now experience it for free for 1 month with this referral link: tesla.com/get-app/referral?c… I only drove my 3 manually 130 km so far of the total 4500 km!
Tesla supervised full self driving in action on the always surprising roads of Silicon Valley: The alternative to an off-road vehicle. FSD 14.3.10 successfully evaded a concrete bag in the lane. The manual process was then to report it via plain old telephone.
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On the 1200 km toward and back and 300 km within busy city traffic of Los Angeles with FSD 14.3.12 no really critical situation occurred! Only twice it slowly entered the badly marked exit lane of parking garages with left-side traffic, but without any other vehicle around. Compared to the previous version it slowed down sufficiently at deep dips, like the one below on the return trip, and successfully avoided scratching the front.
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If oil isn't extracted near the California coast, it flows directly into the Pacific Ocean. Here the natural tar pits at Carpinteria I visited today on the way back home. Also for red brick aficionados something to see there. As usual, all photos when not stated otherwise by me.
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Holger Isenberg retweeted
THE CEASEFIRE HAS COMMENCED
The ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia took effect at 4:00am Moscow time on October 27, 2026.
Timing was accelerated two days ahead of schedule to protect the safety of civilians and to facilitate the delivery of critical humanitarian aid. The ceasefire’s geographic area has expanded beyond Oleshky, within the Kherson Region, to provide safe passage for the humanitarian convoys.
General Valery Gerasimov, Joint Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces has confirmed.
Internet pioneer Vint Cerf talked at @TheMarsSociety's 2026 convention at @USC this week about the Delay/Disruption Tolerant Network (DTN) now operational for NASA's PACE Earth-focused satellite. Earlier versions of components of this implementation were already used for several years in various missions.
