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looks like a puddle of sand in the crater, not the object that made the crater. you can make out some dune crests. i see many odd craters like this, some other ones have puddling with islands and peninsulas the sand being so black it looks like water from orbit, i heard some scientists comment they think it shops evidence of water puddling, not merely sand blowing around. i cant remember the url of the image but if i find it ill return to this thread and post it.
i think the 3D effect seen on the golfball here (making it look half-buried) is illusory due to dark sand area creating a false "terminator line" that happens to apporoximately match the sol shadow angle.
i dodnt find any other examples like this crater so its definately unusual, thats a good directory to browse at random, lots of intersting pics. here's abunch of other great pictures from that directory:
giant worms... [http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ … 01228c.jpg]http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ … 01228c.jpg
...and fossilized slug (partially unearthed): [http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ … 01238b.jpg]http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ … 01238b.jpg
martian megalithic writing (cyrillic or arabic?): [http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ … 01242b.jpg]http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ … 01242b.jpg
a maze: [http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ … 01242a.jpg]http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ … 01242a.jpg
dunno what this is: [http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ … 01212a.jpg]http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ … 01212a.jpg
Anybody got any ideas on what this mysterious feature is?
A beautiful little crater-like or sand dune crescent feature exists at the foot of the Opportunity lander with undisturbed wind rivulets in it. The rover's wheel almost touched it when it drove by, yet they drove past without taking a closer look or having any comments.
The really intriguing thing about it is that there is some sort of bright white material in the rivulet basins, like windblown grains of light material, perhaps lighter windblown sediments or minerals.
im stumped, but im guessing that if the meteor impacts thaw and wet the subsurface then water might seep to the surface and evaporate leaving mineral deposits behind, the mineral crust particles might blow around and collect in hollows like these rivulets. i'd expect more white material to be collected elsewhere, perhaps it is, but this feature seems anomalous, certainly worth a look with the spectrometer. Seems that it might have an interesting story to tell.
any ideas?
[http://www.freewebs.com/atomoid/CraterCrusties.jpg]http://www.freewebs.com/atomoid/CraterCrusties.jpg
