First publication submitted!
We have finally submitted our first paper for the original Planet Four project to the Icarus journal where it is now officially “Under Review”!
(Above figure is one of the paper where we demonstrate one of the reduction steps to identify noise and create averaged clustered markings. I think it demonstrates well the power of our chosen methodology.)
Thank you to everyone to stay with us for so long without seeing any published results, but I think when you will see the work and care that we put into it, you will understand why it took us so long. One of the reasons was, as we possible mentioned before on this blog, that our Zooniverse project is actually one of the most difficult ones, where we ask all of you to precisely mark objects in the data presented to you. This required a spatial clustering pipeline with a long evaluation and fine-tuning phase.
Which brings me to the point of “see[ing] the work”: we have now managed to have the submitted preprint published on the well known arxiv.org preprint server and you can get your hands on a copy right now! Just click on this link and you will be sent to the arXiv page for our preprint:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.10341
Enjoy the (long!) read and don’t shy away to put any questions you have in the comments section below!
Planet Four Blog 
Many thanks for making the paper available so quickly. I’m sure it’ll be accepted for publication. The wind roses are wonderful and I’m hoping many more will become available as time goes by. Congratulations to all those involved.
Best wishes from Kitharode.
You all did great work! Look at what was learned! Congratulations to all of you!
I don’t see how this cannot become a major article with more to come! Maybe next time around you all will be at the LPSC Meeting with a stunning report!
I’m reading the paper now Michael. The starting explanation is well thought out.
The editors should fully understand what you all did with the spacecraft data. I
don’t see how they cannot understand. WELL DONE!!!! : )
Thank you for allowing us to come on board to help you all in this awesome endeavour! : ) Team, go celebrate!
I have finished reading the article. That is one great study well explained! It astounded me what was learned from your alls efforts of study! This reading you all to great pains to put together triggered 3 questions. (sorry)
1) FAN DENSITY : ICE DENSITY (ratio)
Knowing the general surface materials, what is the pressure needed to break the CO2 layer, say average thickeness of 1.5 – 2.5 cm?
note 1: depostions/size differences ( 1 largest and 1 smallest sampling size)
note 2: the 3 largest fans are longer than the APOLLO/SATURN V stack!! (111 meters, 363 feet)
2) ICE DEPTH & SOIL COMPACTION
Would/should varying ice depth and resulting soil compaction directly correlate to seasonal jet variances?
3) GIZA PAGE 55
7.2 Giza, paragraph 2
Could this have been a factor of combinations for the Global Dust Storms of
1970 and 1971?
note 1: google on Mars global dust storm 1970 and Mars global dust storm 1971 for images of the storms. Below that is a 2016 prediction for the next global storm. These storms were seen starting in the southern hemisphere.
note 2: News | Study Predicts Next Global Dust Storm on Mars — this title is below the 1970 Google search parameter. If this study is correct on it’s prediction P4 will have a bland year once this gets going HOWEVER if MRO can catch the start, there may be significant differences from already recorded data sets. The global storms (as observed, have all started in the southern hemisphere)
Thank you team for allowing us to help make your efforts possible. It is an honor for me to be able to do this. I’ve been a space exploration ‘case’ since October 1962, starting with Wally Schirra’s Mercury flight… age 8 and our 1st TV set, a rarity back then. Wow have we ever come a long way!