On the Road Again - volume 6 - Page 5

So these are old pictures? Still there are some interesting features there.

Large cobble with the "sunshade-like" raised crust that we saw at Concepcion.

Hi Barsoomer... Re image in your Reply 81; interesting trenches in the sand between and around the cobble. And scatter berries on the bedrock. Has Oppy been spinning her wheels? Surely can't be wind can it; the trenches are at different angles?

The crust you point out is interesting as well.

sol 2193 synthetic color ( R2, avg ( R1,R2 ), R1 ) of rover tracks:

Oppy will not tarry at twin craters:

02199 p1201.07 0 0 0 0 0 0 front_haz_penultimate_1bpp_pri17
02199 p1211.03 0 0 0 0 0 0 ultimate_front_haz_1_bpp_pri_15
02199 p1254.02 0 0 0 0 0 0 front_haz_fault_pri15_4bpp
02199 p1295.01 0 0 0 0 0 0 front_haz_penultimate_0.5_bpp_pri57
02199 p1302.03 0 0 0 0 0 0 rear_hazcam_2_bpp_pri_17
02199 p1312.07 0 0 0 0 0 0 rear_haz_ultimate_2_bpp_pri15
02199 p1354.01 0 0 0 0 0 0 rear_haz_fault_pri15_4bpp
02199 p1978.09 0 0 0 0 0 0 navcam_5x1_az_180_3_bpp
02199 p1991.07 0 0 0 0 0 0 nav_2x1_rvraz_0_1_bpp_pri42
02199 p1994.05 0 0 0 0 0 0 nav_1x1_MovieFrame_Leye_1bpp_pri72
02199 p2128.02 0 0 0 0 0 0 pancam_cal_targ_L257
02199 p2405.24 0 0 0 0 0 0 pancam_San_Antonio_west_8x1_L257
02199 p2406.21 0 0 0 0 0 0 pancam_drive_direction_4x1_L6R12
02199 p2601.04 0 0 0 0 0 0 pancam_tau_L78R48
02199 Total 0 0 0 0 0 0

A quick snap of San Antonio today and its back on the bus for a loonnggg treck across the plains.

Barsoomer, I think I found out why the sol 1931 images were reposted:

The insert is the result of applying a fractal sharpening plugin repeatedly with successively doubling in size to a small rectangle on the image.

I was only able to do 5 doublings and sharpens with my old computer before I ran out of memory and time.

The next logical step is to continue the doubling in size and sharpening with more and more powerful computers until individual atoms can be seen and from their shape determine the sequences of the DNA trapped in the rocks.

Happy April 1.

A trilobite on Mars, specially on Oppy's pathway, Hmm... Oh yes I have to check the date but...BTW...

BTW Horton, still experimenting with fractals? That's a very interesting way to see the world, (and Mars ) I also is an eager backyard background retired fired replaced experimental hobby scientist on this weird stuff.

Mizar, speaking of fractals...

Mandelbrot set zoom movie:

This is an example of the movies I created over 15+ years ago using software that I wrote and executed on a 75 Mhz Pentium I machine. It took 6 hours of computing

One of the projects I never completed was extending the precision beyond the Pentium limit of 80 bits.

Maybe in my next life.

A wonderful movie Horton; even by todays standards. People must have been in awe by this 15+ years ago!

Thanks for sharing - Bob

Awesome stuff as usual Hort!
I've been pretty busy lately and haven't had time to do much more than lurk infrequently. Love the fractal stuff. I believe that the universe is embedded in one, that much seems obvious. It's so cool that you can actually manipulate the programs and design your own fractals. I used to make my own fractal movies a decade or so ago but I used programs that were on the web, not my own creations. Little did I know that you might have created some of those programs I used
It's always weird when you get to the farthest reach/magnification of fractal programs or systems that use fractal encoding. It seems like reality as we now it starts to break down and seemingly random quantum interactions begin to take over.

Here's an official JPL route map that is right up to date:

I make it about 300 m further south before Oppy is south of the area of larger ripples visible to the east in the image above.

We haven't seen any more big exotic rocks for a while. I'm guessing that the cluster of large meteorites and exotic coarse igneous debris that Oppy encountered a few hundred meters back is part of a band of coarse material concentrated where it was dropped by a surge - a relatively minor surge effect at this location, that pushed everything around but didn't leave much sediment behind. (Maybe the rinds and fills and other similar material that has now been removed by erosion.) Maybe the band of coarse rocks corresponds in some way to the top of the slope leading down to Endeavour. A further search to the north-east and south-west of these big exotic rocks would discover more, but that's a prediction safe from disproof.

Exploratorium site finally downloaded the San Antonio pancams. But now we're down the road a ways so anything interesting, we can't check out. Kind of a drive-by pancam shooting....

San Antonio (Twin Craters) affords another chance to study the interacting histories of impact craters and these ripple-thingees, whatever they are. I'd say that San Antonio is older than Beagle. Beagle seems to have rays of ejecta cross-cutting the big north-south ripples, and only small northeast trending ripples on its near ejecta. San Antonio has big ripples perched right on the rim where they must be covering ejecta, so the big ripples must have moved since the San Antonio impact. If the ripples have moved downwind like dunes, here's one image that kind of makes sense to me:

In the image above I see the crater rim in the foreground. The ripple beyond seems to be in the crater, as if the crater has been filled and then the ripple has migrated a short distance onto the fill in the crater. The banding is facing us so we should expect the ripple to have moved away from us into the crater. Everything makes sense.

OK, but then why is the great majority of the crater interior free of ripples?:

The Hirise image confirms that San Antonio, while closely surrounded by big ripples is almost entirely without big ripples inside the rim. Why is this? Has there been only enough time for the ripples to advance onto the rim? Does the topography of the crater somehow exclude ripples for aerodynamic reasons? What about this ripple?:

I'm referring here to the ripple on the far side of the crater running along the rim. Again we see banding suggesting that the ripple should have moved away from the viewer and therefore out of the crater. Why aren't there any ripples currently crossing the crater? For the ejecta to have been scoured down to these smooth piles many many times the volume of particles in a ripple must have moved across the site. Apparently these scouring particles are not the same sort as those that make up these ripples, because the ripples don't appear to have been active enough even to enter the crater. Or, again, are the ripples somehow excluded from forming in the crater even though there has been plenty of activity?

Kye Goodwin.
I think that perhaps we should be careful about making asssumptions. I mean, what makes you think that the two craters were created at the same time? There are significant differences between East and West craters. Ripple over-run is one of these differences. IMHO, both craters are old, but if we saw them separated by say a kilometer, wouldn't we think they were created at different periods?

I am having difficulty understanding your guess on surge being responsible for the meteorites we have investigated. I just cannot reconcile your statement to the forces required to move such heavy items, with the lack of any other evidence. I don't think that we have seen asibf=gle example of surge effects at aMeridiani have we? Certainly there seems to be no way that surge can be reconciled to the geochemistry of the region. Even Dr Burt has been quiet on this, and Knauth et al have seemingly withdrawn from the argument.

Serpens, re your 93, It seems reasonable that the twin craters were created at the same time, but I'm not sure how it matters to the questions I posed. They appear to be of similar age and both are mostly ripple-free, at least the big north-south ripples haven't moved into the craters. Many scenarios seem possible. Mostly I'm just asking: Why do the big ripples stop at the crater rim?

I'd say that Burt and Knauth have never really been engaged in the debate because they are outsiders with a simple theory that is in direct contradiction with the extraodinary theories that NASA's chosen team has come up with. I think that B&K and a lot of other scientists are waiting for developments, rather than engaging in a David and Goliath battle with the primary funding source for space research. Patience. Occam Rules in the long run.

My point about the meteorites and coarse exotic Mars rocks and the piles of cobbles is that in my opinion they are not in the same locations that they were in when impact initially delivered/created them. Everything on the Meridiani Plains except the dust has been moved around by a force stronger than wind.

I am no expert but logically speaking if one crater is older than the other as they are so close wouldn't the impact on the younger crater have flung debris into the older one? Younger debris would have mixed with older debris and distorted the over shape and patterns of the older crater in general?

KPM, re your 95, that sounds right to me. The symmetry suggests simultaneous impacts. Neither crater appears to be overprinted on the other.

San Antonio Crater is a little unusual in one respect among the many visited by Oppy. There haven't been many craters along the traverse that are clearly older than the last episode of big-ripple development or movement. Eagle and Endurance and environs south almost to Vostok don't have big ripples for observation. Vostok, Erebus, Victoria and San Antonio are the only clear post-ripple-activity craters on my list. All the others seem to be overprinted on the big ripples where big ripples are present.

One thing that the four older craters have in common is that the ripple pattern is not SIMPLY overlaid on the craters. Rather than camouflaging these craters under a blanket of ripples, the ripples have been very RESPONSIVE to the presence of the older craters. Erebus in the Hirise image can be discerned as a circular feature mostly because of its influence on the ripples that surround it and cover most of the interior. There is some depth to Erebus. It is not much, maybe a meter or two, and there are half-meter escarpments. Somehow this bit of relief is enough to "warp" the regular pattern of big ripples dramatically. Victoria's annulus is defined mostly by a relative absence of ripples, and similar to the "rim" of Erebus, the change in topography at the boundary of the annulus is not great, barely apparent at all from a rover view.

I wonder. Have the ripples responded somehow aerodynamically to the low relief still present at these boundaries, or are the ripples perhaps far older than we have been thinking? I don't mean inactive for a longer time but perhaps with a long complex history that does go back somehow even to the time when Erebus was filled or Victoria's ejecta field was rough.

In my 97, that should be," Vostok, Erebus, Victoria and San Antonio are the only clear PRE-ripple-activity craters on my list."

sol 2208 ( Apr 10, 2010 ) "stamp" panorama in drive direction:

Oppy continues to move southward but neither the Exploratorium nor the official MER website have updated for the last 5 sols.

I'm curious about those "horseshoe" shaped rippled depressions in the sand. How could those be formed by wind? One possibility is that every few hundred years or so, there might be "mega-duststorms" where large dust drifts form that erode the sand ripples/dunes. The drifts might subsequently be cleared away in between the mega storms.