Geography of Mars

Be sure to know the following:

• What did the following contribute to the study of Mars before the 20th century?

  Aristotle Aristarchus Ptolemy Copernicus Brahe Kepler Galileo Cassini

  Huygens Maraldi Beer and von Mädler Schiaparelli Lowell Hall Janssen and Huggins Wallace

• Major findings during the excellent 1877 Mars opposition
• In terms of the history of Mars science, what does the "Geographic Period" refer to?
• Orbit characteristics: (semi) major and (semi) minor axes, eccentricity, perihelion and aphelion
• Rotation characteristics: tilt of the rotational axis (obliquity) and what it has to do with seasonality
• Terrestrial planets and differentiation
• How might Earth look when it loses its oceans and surface waters in roughly a billion years?
• Fractionation of magma in a magma chamber, why Earth's continents are granitic and its ocean floors are basaltic. What is the basic mineralogical contrast on either side of the martian crustal dichotomy?
• Alteration of rocks and minerals through interaction with water or ice
• Multispectral versus hyperspectral
• Resolution: spatial, vertical, spectral, radiometric, directional, temporal
• The Martian "geographic grid"
  • How Earth's conventional geographic grid works (N/S, Prime Meridian, numbering of E/W, International Date Line
  • The most common system used today on Mars with + and - for north and south and 360° of longitude, running east (easting) -- be able to convert between the Earth system and the Mars systems
  • A still-used alternative geographic grid, N/S = +/-, but longitude runs west (westing)
• Understand how reference spectra can help identify rocks and minerals that a spectrometer on an orbiter or rover reads
• Know the different mission/spacecraft types relevant to Mars: flyby, orbiter, lander, rover, sample return landers -- be able to name examples of each
• Forty-seven missions have been sent to (or at least toward) Mars. How many have been at least partially or briefly successful? How many were complete failures?
• Wien's Displacement Law
• Be able to recognize the distinctive "looks" of martian craters in comparison with craters on the Moon, Venus, or the few still discernible on Earth. Google Images is helpful here.
• Arguments for and against plate tectonics on Mars
• Seismic stress types and strain/deformation features associated with each type: extensional, compressional, shear
• Be able to describe different types of volcanic edifices on Mars: montes, tholi, pateræ, lava plains
• State of the evidence for a Vastitas Borealis ocean at Contact 1 (Arabia shoreline) and at Contact 2 (Deuteronilus shoreline). Which one is increasingly accepted as having had an ocean by more and more people in the "Mars community?
• Whatever became of the water in the proposed ocean(s) and large lakes/seas?
• Mineralogical evidence for the existence of lakes in Valles Marineris
• Evidence for subsurface ice in high latitudes beyond the polar ice caps
• Possible explanations for chaos terrain
• Possible explanations for Olympus Mons' many peculiar features (size, basal scarp, aureole)
• How can relative ages of martian surfaces be estimated and their absolute ages constrained (at least loosely)?
• Characteristics of the main Martian regions at the first order of relief, including their locations:
  • The great crustal dichotomy
    • Elevation, age, and rock-type differences between the northern third and the southern two-thirds
    • Endogenic and exogenic mechanisms put forward to explain it
  • The Tharsis bulge,
    • Its five main volcanoes, radial fossæ (including Valles Marineris), wrinkle ridges in lavas on the periphery and surrounding Tharsis, the Thaumasia block, effects of Tharsis on the underlying and surrounding crust
    • When did Tharsis start to form and what was its heyday? What signs are there that Tharsis volcanoes may still be able to erupt?
• What is remanent magnetism and where on Mars has it been detected?
• What is the connection between the history of the martian planetary magnetic field and the planet's atmosphere?
• Through which evidence is it argued that the Hellas Planitia impact struck at the very end of the Noachian era when the planetary magnetic field had collapsed?
• Meteorite types and what they have to do with the origins of the solar system (which are differentiated and which are undifferentiated?):
  • Stony meteorites:
    • Chondrites
    • Carbonaceous chondrites
  • Irons
  • Stony-irons
• Know the main types of landforms on Mars and the IAU/USGS/NASA Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature names for them (there's a table in my lecture notes, which you can get to from the course home page)

Tips:

• Do all the reading in Forget, Costard, and Lognonné: Parts 5, 1, and 2 are covered on the midterm (with all their subsidiary chapters). Read each part through once closely, putting checkmarks or highlights to draw your eye later to important definitions, features, processes that might account for them, and any controversies. Then, the night before the midterm, go back over the chapters looking for those highlighted items and just review those.
• Avail yourself of my lecture notes, which I put online and accessible from the home page: https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/mars/, and compare them with the notes you took in class.
• I have put a link to that MOLA map that I labeled with lots of useful place names
• If you have access to GIMP (in our labs or you can download it for free at http://gimp.org, you can also use the map at https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/mars/regions/mercatorMOLApaths.xcf
• Make use of the viewgraphs, which are available from the home page.
• Reread the labs (1-5), not to do them over, but to review their content (mini-lectures)
• The midterm is open everything, but you need to be familiar enough with the content and with where everything is to be able to find it when you're freaking out
• Studying with your colleagues is highly recommended: You can get hold of them to schedule a review session through BeachBoard, also linked to the course home page. Educational research has shown that group study really works: Good students learn even better because the best way to learn something is to try to teach it and students having a hard time with the material benefit from hearing the material from a different perspective.