Jim Phillips writes:

> Sorry for the waste of bandwidth, but after the Mars photo discussion,
>  I thought this might be of interest.

[snip]

>  NASA STATEMENT ON THE PASSING OF GENE SHOEMAKER
>
>       Planetary scientist Dr. Eugene ("Gene") Shoemaker, 69, was
>  killed in a two-car accident near Alice Springs, Australia, on the
>  afternoon of July 18.  His wife Carolyn Shoemaker suffered broken
>  bones, and reportedly is hospitalized in stable condition.

As it occurs, I was speaking to Rene Woc of Adager last night about
Shoemaker's passing. If there were ever anyone who I would care to pattern my
own life after, it would be Eugene Shoemaker. He found joy in everything he
did -- and approached his science with a kindness, humility, enthusiasm and
great curiosity that I would very much want to emulate, if it were in my
power.

Because we're located not very far from Flagstaff, where Shoemaker did the
majority of his work, and because New Mexico State is a school that long ago
specialized in planetary astronomy, I saw Shoemaker many times over the last
30 years. I was always very much impressed with him, his ideas, and his
enthusiasm, from the first time I saw him. Indeed, I was hoping to introduce
Clint Godfrey, the 14-year-old boy that works for us (and who participated on
last year's poster project), to Dr. Shoemaker at some time in the near
future. During the last year, Clint and I have sat together and watched the
relatively recent Nova and National Geographic shows that featured his work.

There are people who could live to be a thousand years old -- and who could
find excitement and joy in every day. But this year has been particularly
hard. Three people who I have held in very high regard for most of my adult
life, Clyde Tombaugh, Carl Sagan, and Eugene Shoemaker, have each passed --
and surprisingly, I feel sorry for myself.

=====================================

However, as for reason enough for continued enthusiasm, I have reduced and
enhanced the newest panorama that JPL released yesterday (July 21). The image
has been resized for a Netscape browser window when a PC is set to SVGA (600
x 800), brightened, and quite significantly sharpened. Indeed, if Netscape's
toolbar, location, and directory options are turned off, the image is still a
little too large, top to bottom -- but it's close.

Nonetheless, the resulting image is extremely impressive.

Per Jim Wowchuk's suggestions, I have painted the color of Mars to be more
like the rich iron-red of the Australian outback than the paler colors of
southern Utah/northern New Mexico. JPL is apparently coming to the same
conclusions. Their colors are richer than they were in the earlier releases.

The URL for the image is:

     http://aics-research.com/sojour21.html

Wirt Atmar