Live From Mars was active July 1996-December 1997.


Student Handout for Lesson 1A

Mars Mystery Spot:
Making Observations

Your job is to analyze and report on the picture of the WARREGO VALLES on Mars. It is a dry river valley system with tributaries. The image was taken by the Viking Orbiter. You need to report to the other teams any evidence you have of the varied (heterogeneous) nature of the geological structures and features observed at this location of Mars. Follow the directions below to analyze the image.

  1. Launch NIH Image.

  2. Go up to the File menu in the Command with your mouse.

  3. Drag down the file menu and let go at the word "Open".

  4. Double click fast on the image file titled: Warrego.tiff

  5. In the tools menu is a picture of a hand. This tool is called the Grabber hand.

    Select this tool by clicking on it once.

    Put your mouse arrow, now looking like the grabber hand, over the image.

    Hold down the mouse button and move the mouse. This is how you can move the image around if your computer screen is too small to see the entire image at once.

    If you want to see what the entire picture looks like, click once on the Zoom box in the upper right corner of the image window. NIH Image will change, zoom in (by scaling) the entire picture so it will fit in the window. Just click in the zoom box again if you want to see the image sized as large as it was when originally opened.

  6. Describe what you see by writing observation notes using the following prompts:

    Look for regional differences identifying general structures or features that are typical of a region.

    Note in your description what direction (left, right, up and down) the features are oriented?

    Note in your description the correct location of the regions by row and column (the origin (0,0)is in the lower left corner.

    After completing your observation notes, hypothesize, suggest, propose and speculate on what you think you are seeing. In other words do you think you are seeing evidence of mountains/hills or large/small flows of liquid?

    Explain in your proposal what knowledge you already have or pictures you have observed in the past that leads you to state you are looking at certain geological features? (hint- What in your background leads you to think you are looking at a planet and not the moon?)