New Mars Forums

yeah, it could only be two dust devils around the same time, i was bewildered by the fact that the dust devil showed up at
http://mars.lyle.org/imagery/2N16374580 … l]13:40:00, then again at http://mars.lyle.org/imagery/2N16374588 … l]13:41:23, but not http://mars.lyle.org/imagery/2N16374585 … ml]between those times (13:40:49) nor http://mars.lyle.org/imagery/2N16374597 … html]after them (13:42:46).
If it were the same dust devil it would have to be moving at quite a clip to be in these two photos, but somehow alter its course ot go invisible to not be captured in the inter or after frames.

So, two devils are in the details! what luck! not to mention Spirit actually getting run over! 
now, was it one of these dust devils pictured that meandered its way up the columbia hills to say hello to Spirit? it looks like theres plenty of dust devils to go around, hopefully well see a monster like the ones seen from orbit soon.

Just read an interesting article that mentions a novel (to me at least) interpretation of all that termite-eaten petrified-wood-like corregated cubby-hole micro-encrusted pock-rock so prevalent at the Opportunity (and Spirit) sites. This had me mystified, and although it surely still does, i like this interpretation, it makes a lot of simple sense that i hadnt considered... to quote:

yeah, so condensation from frost absorbs in and then evaporates back out, weakening it ever so slightly etching away at the powdery rock, slowly eating away widening voids over the eons leaving hard mineralization rinds on parts that dont erode as fast, hmmm very simple. now how come i didnt think of that?

Gosh, its been a while since ive checked these forums and, looking back through the threads, its nice to see such unwavering attention by all you enthusiasts in that neverending search to peel away at Mars' secrets. its been months since ive written anything to these forums (quality time will a software job take away, not that im not glad to finally be employed again though...) so thanks for keeping the light on!

I still think we should send a retread MER at every launch window, perhaps refitted with alternate instruments, that should keep the MSL mission within a moderate budget and allow a backup mission that can deliver real science shoudl anything owrong with MSL (just thnk of two 1.5 bil MSL going poof) MER is less than a third the cost, and think how reliable and durable a MER version 2.0 could be with the operational hindsight we have from the current mission. This is not to poo-poo MSL, its great but i dont want to have all eggs in one technological basket, and would like to see MER platform evolve into a cheap all-purpose system for widespread exporation.

I know MER is a very limited platform compared to MSL, but the bang for the buck and engineering improvements possible with doing it over again, it should be much cheaper and better since all the hard work is done and the bugs are worked out. Its about as cheap as you can get with a roving mission.

Cheap rovers are much needed since there is so much to explore and just one MSL will give us a isolated view, just remember the difference between Gusev and Meridiani. I think that in a general sense, exporation should go wider and shallower rather than narrower deeper. Make an exception for MSL and cross your fingers that the funky drop-it-off rocket pack works, among other things, but back it up with a proven MER as a sidekick just in case the complex wonder turns into a boondoggle. Nasa doesnt need another public relations fiasco and i think we have really just been so lucky with the MERs.

Thats truly an amazing picture Doug, I think we get the picture, I can tell im not the only one who's been patiently going insane waiting to finally get to that heatshield! :bars2:

In case anyone mised it, (i did):
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … .jpg]Frost on Opportunity (!) 257th SOL.
For some reason theres appreciably more water vapor in the air at Meridiani than at Gusev, wonder why that is...

Wet-looking http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … jpg]clouds and still http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … 1.jpg]more clouds

ok, time to revive this neglected thread. I just noticed http://mars.lyle.org/imagery/2P15459570 … JPG.html]a UFO imaged by Spirit. Okay, maybe thats a Unidentified Flotsam Object, as it seems a bit too dark to be actually be a martian bird or something flying on the wind, id assume if it were it would be a bit more washed out by the atmospheric effects, but then, maybe its a fly or a something very close to the camera lens, that would allow ti to be dark as seen. it also seems to be in prety good focus, which makes me thnk its at least a few feet away from the lens, i dont know what aperture the pan lenses have but id expect it to be a bit blurrier if it were actually a dust mote on the lens itself, and would also i assume be in more than one frame like the other small and blurry dust motes that are visible on this frame and repeated on many other Spirit Right Pancam #2 filter images. it doesnt show up in the Left pancam image taken at the same exact time. so its apparently must be within a several inches of the camera lens to be out of frame for the that shot. so it cant be too far, but it cant be too near, right?

This is the biggest peice of mystery flotsam ive yet seen, any theories?

I hadn't even considered that idea, and thats what i love about these forums, i just throw out my partially-educated guess on what i see and wait for one of the several experts (or novice like you and I) in these threads to come along throw a devils-advocate wrench into the idea or straighten it out*.

Hellas basin, being by far the lowest point on Mars, must have seen its days as a deep inland sea for a signifficantly long period of time, im not sure what elevation these features are in relation to the average depoth of Hellas, but sinkholes explain the lack of adjacent "crater-like" features better than craters... hmmm...

*footnote:
Not that i have ever taken a college level geology course, its all just stuff i gathered over the last 10 years mostly from reading http://www.sciencenews.org/]Science News and http://www.sciam.com/]Scientific American usually while sitting on the toilet, the "seat of reason" (just what was the thinking guy in Rodan's sculpture sitting on anyway?), probably where most scientific breakthroughs are born, but i digress... (sorry if i offended anyone with such a poignant reference!). but seriously!

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r03_r09 … .html]That weird image, (thanks REB for finding it) is of some West Hellas Planitia rugged terrain.

To me, it smacks of water-transported sediments. It really looks a bit like exhumed remnants of the type of meandering and overlapping swirls you get in marshes and estuaries as small streams drop their sediment and keep building their banks higher until they spill over into lower ground starting a new swirl pattern to occlude older ones. Either that or built-up travertine pool rim deposits. If sedimentary, it looks like the white swirly parts might be composed of sediments much like the light colored material at Opportunity's site. I wonder if we might find it too riddled with blueberries.

One weird thing about it is that the areas below the swirly parts looks as if it overlain by darker material, which appears to be riddled with many sand-fileld craters. If they are craters, which they appear to be, then its kind of odd because the craters appear to be much more abundant in this small area that has sand atop it, whereas the swirly parts have very few craters with the very noticeable exception being that crater smack-dab in the middle of the stream near the right of the image, the stream apparently seems to push around the crater hole bulging around it on either side as if to compensate. go figure...
???

Rivers of black sand relentlessly driven by the wind,
etching out the topography over the millions of years,
spilling and carving its way uphill http://www.marsunearthed.com/Anaglyphs/ … 151.htm]to the right in this picture.

Thankyou for http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/20 … 52.gif]all of those excellent finds.
This one just cries out: "http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/20 … if]aquifer".
But I think i'll make http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r03_r09 … 8.gif]this one my desktop.

Thanks Reb for the statistics, its interesting to see an at-a-glance chart like that, i had forgotten that Ganymede was the solar system's largest moon, usurping Titan's namesake.

I sure hope Huygens has a good descent imager and will take lots of pictures (the MERs took only 3) so we can get a good sense of the differences between the dark/light areas on the way down.

The 'tongues' at the bottom of the gullies i thought were water pool remnants, i still tend to think so, but i can see that it also looks like glacier tongues, or slide tongues, for instance, the areas below the slopes in the image below seem to be blobs of catastrophic erosion debris (an ice/rock/ash slurry?) underneath the soil and floating the overlying material down the slope with it like in
this picture of Mt. St. Helens, 2 frames taken 9/03 and 10/04.
a few striking resemblances to martian features eh?

Those dark streaks NASA dismisses as 'dust avalanches', which seems the simplest of the possible explanations. the high contrast of the dark streaks to the light soils is apparently due to the revealing of non sun-bleached soil by the avalanche and underexposed due to the contrast balance needed to optimally image the surrounding terrain. the liquid theory is appealing, but if it were some type of liquid, id expect to see more erosion associated with the streaks, but they seem so smooth, many of the streaks end in a ragged fluted edge which is odd. i cant wait for some MRO pictures to shed some more light on this mystery as well as those isolated dark sand drifts like http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15 … 40.jpg]the ones in the middle of the picture with the splash crater and streaks.

the splash crater certainly argues that its wet below the surface, very wet. im definately not an astrophysist, but i wouldn't expect a comet to make such a big splash from its own water alone, i think the energy of the collision would mostly vaporize the water, whereas if one hit permafrost, the hot debris curtain might melt and disturb a comparatively large area of permafrost like we see. maybe the splash crater 'tongues' are remnants as the less-cemented soils around it got eroded away over the ages leaving them an embossed look, and not really debris curtain material sitting on top.

Yes, another brain! Remember this brain's http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/ … gif]bigger brother?
I find it most curious how brains are found only in the bottoms of craters... hmmm...
But is this brain dead? Certainly not! Having been stirred from its eternal slumber by Opportunity, it has now begun to evolve at a terrifying pace! Only God can save us now!

I believe that Odyssey should have gotten a huge neutron count for any areas of liquid water on the surface if they existed. Although it only measures netrons dissociated from hydrogen by cosmic rays (at least i think thats how it works...) any water on the surface shoull show a big return with this instrument. The http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey … .jpg]false color map shows a lot of blue over the ice especially...

Although i guess it possible that these "lakes" would be too small to show up on such a global image, id suspect that any water, even if it is brine and doesnt freeze, should impart immediately apparent erosional affects on its immediate surroundings