Projects
MarsDials
The Mars Exploration Rovers each carry an identical sundial, approximately three inches square. Space artist Jon Lomberg (a Planetary Society Advisor) designed the face of the MarsDial, and Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society, coined the MarsDial's motto: Two Worlds, One Sun. Their primary function is as calibration targets for the high-resolution Panoramic Cameras aboard each rover, so they are imaged frequently over the course of the mission. But these thousands of images of the MarsDials with their moving shadows calso serve to remind the public that Mars and Earth truly are two worlds with one Sun.
The idea of using the calibration target as a Martian sundial was a brainstorm of Bill Nye the Science Guy, then a Planetary Society board member. To design the MarsDial and develop it for flight, Nye worked with Steve Squyres, Principal Investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover mission; Jim Bell, lead scientist for the rovers' cameras; Lomberg; Friedman; astronomer and artist Tyler Nordgren; astronomer and sundial expert Woody Sullivan; and instrument maker Larry Stark.
Because the MarsDials are on moving platforms, traditional hour marks won't work. Instead, hour marks need to be applied to each image of a MarsDial by utilizing rover geometry information. The Planetary Society's Red Rover Goes to Mars Student Astronauts, 16 young people from 12 countries, processed the MarsDial images as they were returned from Mars throughout January and February 2004.
The MarsDials inspired a followup project called the EarthDials. EarthDials are an international network of Webcam-equipped sundials. All EarthDials share a design based upon the MarsDials.
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