One frozen slice of the Mars Climate Database v6.2: the noon sunlight at six sites through the year, in a clear sky, a dusty season and a global dust storm. A separate layer holds one sol at the twelve stored local times. Modelled values. No power system was sized.
n/aSeason, Ls
n/aNoon flux, W/m²
n/aDust optical depth
n/aDusty minus clear, W/m²
Stylised strip, not a map: the six sites by their real latitude and longitude.
n/a
Illustrative drawing, real values. Sky haze follows the real dust optical depth, the Sun disc the real noon flux. The lander, horizon and dust motes are decoration. Modelled output, one frozen database slice.
Stored values · modelled · not ranked
Six sites side by side
ModelledEach bar spans the stored values over the seasonal samples (every 30° of Ls) at local noon, 0 m, on a horizontal surface. Sites are in fixed order, not ranked and not scored. A bar is a range of samples, not an uncertainty: none is published. Deficit is dusty minus clear (cold scenario), not minus climatology.
The dust-storm scenario exists only for Ls 180 to 330 (6 samples); the dusty scenario has all 12. "Samples" are seasonal steps, not days. Optical depth bars use the database's own unit on their own axis. No crew or load model: nothing here says whether any site is usable. No power system was sized.
Measured · PDS Pancam · 2018
Opportunity, June 2018
MeasuredThe left panel is a measurement: Opportunity's Pancam atmospheric opacity at 880 nm, 61 points copied from one PDS table. The right panel is model output: the database's monthly mean dust column visible optical depth for its dust-storm scenario. They are different quantities in different units, each on its own axis. No conversion factor was applied.
Pull-up layer
Method and sources
Real, modelled and illustrative
Modelled · every flux and optical depth
Everything except Opportunity's opacity is Mars Climate Database v6.2 output, read from saved interface responses by the repository's own parser and exported unchanged. The year is incident solar flux on a horizontal surface at local true solar time 12 h and 0 m above the surface, plus the monthly mean dust column visible optical depth. The One sol layer is a second slice of the same scenarios: the twelve stored local times at one site and one Ls. This is not daily energy and not panel output.
Measured · Opportunity 2018 opacity
61 Pancam atmospheric opacity values at 880 nm, sols 5066.54 to 5105.61, Ls 165.6 to 187.9, from PDS product 1tau880_5106_20181207a. Opacity and the database's optical depth are different units. They never share an axis and no conversion factor was applied.
Illustrative · the hero scene
A drawing with real values: sky haze follows 1 − e^(−τ/2) of the real dust optical depth τ; the Sun disc radius follows the square root of the real noon flux against the largest flux in the slice. The horizon, rocks, lander or rover silhouette and the drifting dust motes are decoration. It is not a picture of any site or storm.
Illustrative · replay and strip
The replay steps through 12 seasonal samples; there is nothing between them and no interpolation. 1× is 1.6 seconds per sample. The Mars strip is stylised; only the marker positions are real latitudes and longitudes.
Scenarios (the interface's own names)
Page label
Interface label
dust
Ls samples
Sites
Site
Latitude, longitude
Where the coordinate is written
Source file
The three landing sites (Deuteronilus Mensae, Protonilus Mensae, Mesopotamia) are exploration-zone candidates from 2015 abstracts, not selected sites. The rover coordinates are the database web page's presets.
How to read it
The deficit is the stored dusty flux minus the stored cold (clear, low-dust) flux at the same site and Ls: the dusty (warm) scenario and the dust-storm scenario against the cold baseline. Climatology is stored and shown but is not turned into a deficit. The dust storm is the interface's "average" scenario, not a specific year, and exists only for Ls 180 to 330; earlier requests are rejected by the interface, so those samples are absent, never zero. How long a deficit lasts is a count of seasonal samples, not days. On the One sol layer the same rule uses the twelve stored local times: a count of those samples, including a stored flux of zero. No uncertainty is published, so none is drawn. The project says:
The method text from the project
The project's own sentences (0)Data files (0, data/MANIFEST.tsv)
Citations
Code
This project on GitHubSource code, exporter and tests (sighmon/space, mars-surface-power).
No power system sizedNo claim of safe or unsafeNo combined scoreNo ranking of sitesClimatology not turned into a deficitNo opacity to optical depth conversionNo interpolation between seasonsNo interpolation between stored local timesNo Earth-day durationNo daily energy or panel outputNo error bars inventedStorm never faked before Ls 180