Tag: mars

Jacopo Sansovno

Jacopo Sansovno, “Mars”, Doges Palace, Venice, Italy

In 1485, the Great Council in Venice decided that a ceremonial staircase should be built within the courtyard of the Doges Palace. The design envisaged a straight axis with the rounded Foscari Arch, with alternate bands of Istrian stone and red Verona marble, linking the staircase to the Porta della Carta, and thus producing one single monumental approach from the Piazza into the heart of the building. Since 1567, the Giants’ Staircase is guarded by Jacopo Sansovno’s two colossal statues of “Mars” and “Neptune”,  which represents Venice’s power by land and by sea, and therefore the reason for its name.

Calendar: June 28

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 28th of June

Iced Coffee

On June 28, 1911 the Nakhla meteorite falls to earth and lands in Egypt.

The Nakhla meteorite is a prototypical example of the Nakhlite type meteorite of the SNC Group of Mars meteorites. These meteorites are considered to have been ejected by the impact of another large body colliding with the Martian surface. They orbited through the solar system before penetrating the Earth’s atmosphere. This Nakhla meteorite landed in the Abu Hommos district near the village of El Nakha El Bahariya, Egypt.

Many people witnessed the descent, approaching from the north-west, with an inclination of about 30 degrees. It was trailed by a column of white smoke. Several explosions were heard before it fell to earth into an area of about three miles in diameter. About forty fragments were discovered, some buried in the ground up to a meter deep. The original weight of the meteorite was estimated at twenty-two pounds (ten kilograms); fragments weighed from 20 grams to eighteen hundred grams.

The Nakhla meteorite is especially significant because it is the first Martian meteorite to show signs of aqueous processes on Mars. The rock contains carbonates and hydrous minerals, formed by chemical reactions in water. In addition, the rock was exposed to water after it formed, which caused secondary accumulations of minerals. The carbonates contain more 13C than rocks formed on Earth, indicating Martian origin.

London’s natural History Museum, which holds several intact fragments of the meteorite, allowed NASA researchers to break one open in 2006, providing fresh samples, relatively free from Earth-sourced contamination. These NASA scientists found an abundance of complex carbonaceous material occupying branching structural pores and channels in the rock, resembling the effects of bacteria observed in rocks on Earth.

Side Note: One fragment of the meteorite was said to have landed on a dog, as observed by a farmer named Mohammed Ali Effendi Hakim in the village of Denshal. It supposedly vaporized the animal instantly. Since no remains of the dog were recovered and there were no other eyewitness to the dog’s demise, this story remains apocryphal. However, the story of the Nakhla dog has become something of a legend among astronomers.

Bridget McCrum

Bridget McCrum, “Mars”, Date Unknown, Charcoal, Acrylic and Gesso on Canvas, 102 x 150 cm

Bridget McCrum is an English artist known for her stone carvings. She studied at Farnham College of Art, training as a painter with Lesjek Musjynski, in the 1950s. She came to sculpture in her forties and from 1980 began to work primarily in stone, having learned her craft from John Joeku and Andrea Schulewitz on the South Downs.

“Since childhood I have been excited by ancient remains, fragments of carving and standing stones in lonely landscapes. My travels have taken me to many sites from different cultures around the Mediterranean, and the chance to work on archaeological surveys in Somalia during the early eighties increased my interest in small objects from the past.

The landscape around my two homes has inevitably worked itself into my head. The gentle curves of the hills of South Devon and the stark limestone cliffs carved by wind and sea on Gozo, have all subconsciously influenced my carving. I look down on birds circling and gliding above their prey from my home high above the Dart estuary. They make marvellously abstracted subjects and I have carved them ever since I have been here. Some have been cast into bronze which I patinate myself.” – Bridget McCrum

The Borghese Ares

The Borghese Ares (Mars), Roman Imperial Era, 238.8 cm, Musee du Louvre, Paris, France

The Borghese Ares is a Roman marble statue of the Imperial Era of the first or second century AD. Standing at 238.8 cn (7 feet) tall, it is identifiable as the Roman god Ares by the helmet and the ankle ring given him by his lover Aphrodite. This statue possibly preserves some features of an original work in bronze, now lost, of the fifth century BC. Formerly part of the Borghese collection, this Ares statue was purchased from the collection in 1807 by Emperor Napoleon; it currently is housed at the Musee du Louvre in Paris.

The discovery of artifacts from the ancient Greek cult of Ares, particularly sculptural representations of Ares, is a rare occurrence. Scholars had prviously thought the Borghese Ares might be derived from a statue created by Alcamenes, an Athenian sculptor. This was based on the writings of the  second-century Greek historian Pausanias who stated that Alcamenes had sculpted a statue of Ares later erected on the Athenian Agora, the central public assembly location in the city.

However, as the temple of Ares which Pausanias referenced had only been moved from the Athens suburb of Acharnes and re-sited in the Agora during the reign of Emperor Augustus (27 BC to 14 AD), this a chronological impossibility. Due to this, it is highly unlikely that the Borghese Ares is a copy of Aleamenes’s work but, more likely, a Roman creation copying the style of Neo-Classicism.

Frosted Sand Dunes of Mars

NASA, Frosted Sand Dunes: Mars

In this amazing photo taken by NASA’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on their Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, we see frosted sand dunes on Mars from above. The photo was taken on March 27, 2016 at 15:31 local Mars time.

“Sand dunes cover much of this terrain, which has large boulders lying on flat areas between the dunes. It is late winter in the southern hemisphere of Mars, and these dunes are just getting enough sunlight to start defrosting their seasonal cover of carbon dioxide. Spots form where pressurized carbon dioxide gas escapes to the surface.”- NASA