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　　NASA's "Cloud Watching Project" asks the public to look for similar arching features in images of the Martian atmosphere taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to prove the existence of clouds.

　　at the end of 2020, planetary scientist Marek Slipski (Marek Slipski) stared at the computer screen for a long time every day, and he spent a lot of time carefully studying the images of the Martian atmosphere: Zoom in, adjust color contrast, enhance image brightness, swap colors in image areas. It is understood that Sliwski, a senior postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has devoted himself to searching for the characteristics of Martian clouds in recent years. Although he wrote an algorithm to complete the Mars cloud survey mission, the results But it was mixed, so he could only observe the image data with the naked eye.

　　Surprisingly, Sliwski soon paid off. He found that the height and brightness of each Martian cloud group were different, Sliwski said: "I watched it for about a week, and the reaction was at that time. Yes: Well, it will take a little more time, think back to the scene, if only someone could help!"

　　Coincidentally, NASA just called for active participation in the Citizen Science Seed Fund program, which will give space enthusiasts a chance to participate in cutting-edge research, says Skowski and Armin Kleinboch. Kleinbohl immediately began drafting a proposal—a survey to identify clouds in the middle of the Martian atmosphere. Clouds float 50-80 kilometers above the surface of Mars, and as seen from observations from the Mars Climate Rover, survey instruments orbiting Mars measure the temperature, ice and dust content of the Martian clouds.

　　After weeks of beta testing, a project called "Observing the Clouds on Mars" was launched at the end of June on the "Cosmic Zoo" platform, which has hundreds of popular projects and is joined by about 2,600 volunteers, who are on the forum. Introduce yourself and delve into images of the Martian atmosphere at different altitudes, locations, and times of day from climate probes. Volunteers only need a computer and internet access to contribute, as the data is viewed through a browser-embedded visualization tool, which also comes with an optional tutorial to get started quickly.

　　At the end of June, a project called "Observing the Clouds on Mars" was launched on the "Cosmos Zoo" platform, which has hundreds of popular projects, and about 2,600 volunteers joined them. They introduced themselves on the forum and delved into the analysis of climate. Images of the Martian atmosphere at different altitudes, locations, and times of day from the probe.

　　The five researchers who make up the Cloud Viewing Team hope the work will reveal global weather patterns on Mars, why the Martian atmosphere is thinner than Earth's, and even help us understand how the liquid water that once existed on Mars' surface escaped into space. "The climatological data we have obtained through the Citizen Science Seed Fund project will be more comprehensive than all Mars atmospheric surveys to date," said Klein Boch, associate principal investigator of the Cloud Watch Group.

　　Kleinboch is interested in the formation process of Martian clouds, which are mainly composed of carbon dioxide (dry ice) or water ice. Extremely cold conditions, as solid carbon dioxide typically condenses at a lower temperature than the Martian atmosphere; and clouds with a higher composition of water-ice ice may tell us about the presence of water vapour, and what may be responsible for transporting water vapour to high altitudes process.

　　The Mars Climate Probe is one of six instruments onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting Mars since 2006, and is equipped with nine channels, each tuned to a different wavelength of visible or infrared light, and Map the thermal radiation from the surface of Mars to an altitude of 80 kilometers. While the climate sounder wasn't specifically designed to study atmospheric activity, mission scientists immediately noticed a prominent arch in the thermal radiation map suggesting the presence of Martian clouds. They found that these arching features are caused by the change in the angle between the clouds and the infrared sensor as the spacecraft orbits Mars, appearing to be closer to the ground as the probe approaches the clouds (similar to how we observe Earth's rotation). , the sun rises and sets in a distinct arch in the sky). Therefore, the highest point of the arched feature represents the true maximum height of the Martian clouds above the surface.

　　In this "cloud watching project," citizen scientists used a point-and-click tool to identify any arched peaks found in climate sounder thermal radiation maps at different altitudes and times, with each image displayed in 4 different frames ( original frame and three other frames with different contrast and brightness). At the same time, they can also change the color to find the arched peaks that are particularly dim in color, perhaps due to human error, after all, different users have different perceptions of the same image before they are completed.

　　It is reported that Sliwski and Kleinboch have uploaded about 4.5 months of Martian atmosphere images on "Cloudspotting", and it is expected that it will take people several months to interpret, Kleinboch said: " The cloud-watching project is of great significance for analyzing the Martian atmosphere far beyond our previous expectations. In just a few weeks, citizen scientists scrutinized more than 6,000 images of Mars (over 120,000 image categories), with an average of 3-4 clouds can be found."

　　In fact, mobilizing the public to analyze massive data sets is nothing new. Scientists have previously used the "Cosmic Zoo" platform to classify space photos, digitize rainfall records on Earth, etc. This is a beneficial research method that involves finding computers Astronomical features that are too hidden and complex to be identified by the system. Karen Masters, an astronomer at Haverford College and lead researcher on the Cosmic Zoo project, said: "Humans have evolved over thousands of years to be very good at recognizing patterns and filtering out irrelevant information. It’s relatively easy to be good at it, and it’s relatively easy for people to outperform computers, but it’s also challenging to work with people, that is, how to get people interested in the project and keep it popular.”

　　It is reported that in order to allow more people to participate in the "Viewing Cloud Project", the research team remains highly active on the forum: solve problems with participants, respond to and analyze any arch features found by the public, and expand on Mars science. For example: A project participant asked: How to identify the arching features of the Martian atmosphere, and how to help future manned spacecraft to navigate the Martian atmosphere? On July 15, Sliwski held a webinar to give citizen scientists a chance to meet with the research team, and at the seminar he made it clear that flying into the icy Martian atmosphere is not an option!

　　The Cloud Watch team doesn't expect participants to have access to all of the data from the climate probes, which were collected over 8 Martian years (roughly equivalent to 16 Earth years), once a representative few years of surveys have been analyzed data, Sliwski hopes to use cloud features to match his algorithms to get more reliable results. Ultimately, this will provide one of the most comprehensive, long-term survey databases that scientists can use to gain deeper insight into the ancient and current conditions of the Martian atmosphere.

　　Majd Mayyasi, a planetary scientist at Boston University who did not participate in the project, is very interested in Mars exploration. He said: "Mars survey data spanning 16 Earth years is not small data. Through in-depth observation and analysis by the public , I believe that the composition of the middle layer of the Martian atmosphere, as well as the properties of water and clouds in the lower and upper atmospheres, will be revealed in the near future, revealing how they fit together."

　　Majasin, who has studied how water escapes from the Martian ionosphere into space, now points out that atmospheric clouds play an important role in how water is transported from the surface to higher altitudes.

　　"This is a very important step in the evolution of the Martian atmosphere from a warm, wet planet in ancient times to a cold, dry environment today, and with the help of citizen scientists, the Cloud Watch team hopes to release preliminary results in early 2023," Sliwski said. Once the entire database has been analyzed and published, they will expand on this work to more fully characterize cloud numbers and climate patterns across the planet, as well as to understand in detail how dust, water vapor and carbon dioxide move through the Martian atmosphere."

　　However, there is still a lot of data that needs to be analyzed in depth. It is reported that two weeks ago, the cloud observation team released the second batch of Mars images, about 12,000 images, equivalent to 8 Earth months of atmospheric survey data for citizen scientists to continue to classify.

　　Citizen science projects are expected to remain active for the next two years, with the Mars Climate Probe continuing to send images of the Martian atmosphere by the end of 2022 (perhaps longer if NASA decides to extend the probe's mission), Cray said. "I hope to be able to accumulate more Martian years of survey data, hopefully by the end of the decade, to develop a definitive, detailed theory of the Martian atmospheric climatology," said Enboch.