On the Road Again - volume 4 - Page 2

Great image in reply 15 Hort. Looks like some currious, "Mars stuff," indeed.

Fred

Expected EDRs by sequence number and image type:

Sol Seq.Ver ETH ESF EDN EFF ERP Tot Description
----- -------- --- --- --- --- --- ---- -----------
02107 p1131.04 2 0 2 0 0 4 f_haz_idd_mb_doc_512x512x1bpp_vhigh
02107 p1143.02 1 1 0 0 0 2 front_lhaz_RAT_subframe_512x512_loco_pri_27
02107 p1149.05 1 1 0 0 0 2 frhaz_RAT_bit_check_subframe_loco_pri_27
02107 p1149.05 1 1 0 0 0 2 frhaz_RAT_bit_check_subframe_loco_pri_27
02107 p1149.05 1 1 0 0 0 2 frhaz_RAT_bit_check_subframe_loco_pri_27
02107 p1149.05 1 1 0 0 0 2 frhaz_RAT_bit_check_subframe_loco_pri_27
02107 p1154.01 2 0 0 2 0 4 front_hazcam_idd_unstow_doc
02107 p1550.01 2 0 1 0 0 3 navcam_tau
02107 p1588.03 6 0 6 0 0 12 navcam_cloud_movie_right_eye_pri_57
02107 p2601.03 4 2 0 0 2 8 pancam_tau_L78R48
02107 p2631.01 11 0 0 0 2 13 pancam_sky_spot_L234567R34567
02107 p2633.02 4 2 0 0 2 8 pancam_late_tau_L58R48
02107 Total 36 9 9 2 6 62

Good news ( sort'a ). Looks like the problem is isolated to the RAT only. If the RAT can be moved so that the RAT-bit is visible to the front hazcam then the arm is working ( sort'a ).

Sol 2107 bad news:

None of the scheduled sol 2107 front hazcam images were downlinked - implying the move of the arm was unsuccessful. The cloud_movie was downlinked - but no clouds.

It looks like I am talking to myself again - so I will stop.

If anyone is interested, there are some new images on my Flickr Photostream.

> It looks like I am talking to myself again - so I will stop.

We're listening. It could be the commanding is just haphazard over the holiday period. One might expect a status report if the arm is really broken.

Some oddly shaped dark rocks at the bottom of this image.

Yeah it is busy for all over the holiday period including JPL/NASA let us hope this is the case.

Hort we are listening and appreciate all you do on this Blog.

sol 2108 ( Dec 29, 2009 ) enhanced cloud movie:

Oppy is still looking at clouds. And the plan for sol 2109 is...

Sol Seq.Ver ETH ESF EDN EFF ERP Tot Description
----- -------- --- --- --- --- --- ---- -----------
02109 p1588.03 6 0 6 0 0 12 navcam_cloud_movie_right_eye_pri_57
02109 p2601.03 4 2 0 0 2 8 pancam_tau_L78R48
02109 Total 10 2 6 0 2 20

Since nothing is happening now I revisited the sol 1886 cobble Kasos using the original 12 bit data.

There is some really weird ( to me ) stuff on the edge of the cobble.

sol 1886 3D of fibers on Kasos:

Will not one "It's a rock" guy look at this in 3D and "see"?

I am reminded of a scene in the play Life of Galileo when Galileo pleaded with the Cardinals to just look through the telescope and SEE! - and they responded with scholared discourses on why they could not possibly see what Galileo claimed they would see.

In the end they left to attend a ball and Galileo was ultimately forced to recant - or die.

Just SEE!, damn you - SEE!.

Hi Hort

Beautiful image at reply #28. The beauty of #28 is that a range of structures representing different aspects of such mycelium can clearly be seen, even at near the limits of resolution of the MI. I'm certain the textures will be explained away as dust accumulated over millions, perhaps billions of years and sculpted by the winds and occasional minimal moisture episodes into patterns just coincidentally reminiscent of chains of sporulating bodies, hyphae, etc.

The "Its a Rock" people cannot see and they have convinced, by their eminent authority, the others who might have had open minds not to see also.

This is the best one I've seen so far but there have been other images of cobbles from early on with similar surficial textures that are absolutely reminiscent of fungal hyphal mycelium but we have been conditioned to believe that such is impossible.

In the meantime, I hope you will continue to keep on documenting these seemingly impossible structures and hope that some older NASA biological scientist will have a eureka moment and do something about it. The younger ones probably do not look at analagous earth organisms through a microscope as they only use Eliza and other genetic tests to identify organisms nowadays.

Congrats!

Winston

Thanks for the encouragement Winston.

As long as I am able I will continue to provide as clear a vision through the "scope" as my amateur efforts can provide in the hope that the Earth-centered mindset of NASA will be shattered someday.

But for the present:

Sol 2109 was yet another day of looking for funny animal shapes in the clouds:

The clouds were fairly diffuse so I used a slightly different processing technique to enhance the contrast - but was unable to do anything about the major lens flare on the bottom of the image.

Sol 2110 ( tomorrow ) will be a very busy day!

Almost every image sequence planned in the last week that did not complete ( except, very significantly, the full filter pancam RAT_hole_Peck_Bay sequence) has been rescheduled for sol 2110 - including a MI sequence and Hazcam RAT_bit_checks.

My best guess is that the RAT grind did not happen and can not happen and the very interesting surface of Marquette will be examined once more with the MI before "moving on" in a few sols.

Marquette was targeted almost two months ago - 2/3 of a nominal mission devoted to a single rock.

I now have 143 images tagged with the keyword "Marquette" - I beleive a record maximum for a single target.

Easy Hort,

Someone once said, “Forgive them, they know not what they do.” Rock guys see rocks and dust. Even if they have little sacks of fluid in them rolling around, they just can not see it.
The sad truth is the rover can not scientifically prove anything. Even if it was in the middle of a corn field it would still be mineralogy that looks like a corn field.

Trudge on elephant man. We are all watching and listening.

Fred

Sorry Hort; If we can't wet it ,smell it, feel it, or bust it open we really can't be of much help particularly when we aren't even sure of the color.
But, don't let that stop you from commenting whenever you like

Ben

I really appreciate your comments above. They are absolutely reasonable and fair comment.

This is in contrast to the rock guys of former years who, despite not being in a position to wet them, smell them, feel them, bust them open or to be absolutely certain of their colour, deemed every item on mars "just rocks".

Nothing was anomalous, everthing could be explained on the basis of our mineralogical experience of rocks on earth.

My position has always been that I am not sure what gives rise to these textures and that they might indeed be "just rocks", but that some of them looked biological to me, despite the apparent impossibility of such a claim.

Winston

Ben, you can see the morphology.

Is there a long list of mineralogical possibilities for a wispy coating like this, if you saw it on an Earthly rock? Or is there a short list, or is there no list at all? What could cause fiber-like growths? Asbestos or similar minerals? Why not hazard some kind of guess? Or is this totally outside your experience?

Ugh, not a happy RAT. It looks like the two cycloidal cutters didn't...

I look at the pre-RAT MI's and think "serpentization", and was hoping that this grind would show more.

--Bill

sol 2110 ( Dec 31, 2009 ) 3D of Marquette RAT grind:

with links to infrared / visible 3D, animation and MI 3D pairs.

The most interesting result to me is the infrared/visible comparisons.

The material scraped away by the rat is red/light blue whereas the RATed rock is dark blue / light blue. The dust coating is white / red. What is the red / light blue stuff?

I will redo the pancam inages when all the filters are downlinked.

the pancam request for RAT_hole_Peck_Bay2 must have been sent on the sol 2110 morning pass.

So happy that the problems in the last week seem to have been RAT related and not arm related.

The Mossbauer Spectrometer has been placed on the RAT hole, so we may be here for at least another week or so!

Rock guys, I'm not just picking on you. I know it ain't science to say "I don't know" - but at least give hints of the form "If this were an observation on the Earth then the possible identifications in decreasing probability are..."

Silence is not an option.

I'll have a go at the cloud movie now...

Taking the suggestion of reply 35, here is an image of serpentinized olivine.

and one with a band of magnetite from the same web site.

(I think Hort has suggested the possibility of magnetized dust forming intricate patterns.)

These do look to have similarities to images of Marquette, although the scale is, of course, somewhat different.

It's good to see you guys comment and appreciate Horton's work. I am not a rock guy, not a geologist, neither a scientist. But I know Horton, from the very first comments here on this forum years ago. He is simply irreplaceable. As a curiosity I'll post a honor maked years ago, still relevant, and with my best wishes to you all; A happy new year, my dear friends!

Off topic? Who cares today?

Barsoomer, totally cool images in reply 37. What mechanism creates the patterns in the serpentinized olivine?

And now - the world's first(?) enhanced 3D view of Martian clouds over Meridiani.

with links to an animation of the cloud movement.

The clouds are floating over a background created by the image processing to remove vignetting, lens flare, scattered light from dust on the lens, JPG artifacts, 12 to 8 bit data conversion, phases of the moon Phobos, what I had for supper last night and the shifting value of Plank's constant.

Happy New Year from Mars.

Ben, If we assume that Horticolor is a reasonable approximation of what we would see on site then the grind debris do provide a pseudo streak test. So potentially we could attribute the white dust debris to bronzite. An orthopyroxene that would be expected to be a major constituent of a peridotite and we know from JPL that there is a lot of olivine present.

The red dust is I think the same red dust that covers everything on Mars. The dark blue to black? Not a clue although Barsoomer raises a very interesting point with serpentine. This would also link to the methane source on Mars.

And Kasos? Well I have never seen any results from the APXS and Mb integration but I think there are orthorhombic crystal shapes there. Olivine perhaps? But I have to ask LWS. Is there any way that a fungus could flourish in this environment?