Mars_On_The_Wings_Of_Time

In the polar dunes of Mars, circles the ultimate bird of prey, Time.
Secrets offered openly for future explorers. Travel with care and trepidation.
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PSP_010546_2615. HiRISE, color JP2, at 1 to 1, sharpened to 8.2, rotated left to -34 degrees. Location, x=12500 , y=20850.

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Size 2 to 1, marked and altered slightly. Reoriented, the topic image image gives a rotation figure for that image from the full frame JP2 image.
Interested in any technical explanations on the size limits or expansion capabilities for these common ovoid/circular structures which are very common on the dunes. The sixe is quite variable in the dunes and the bright patches.

While finishing a few sub-images of this topic location from the HiRISE original PSP_010546_2615, I am going to release this nearby image of some of the bright material found between the dunes. There is a great diversity in the relics found in the images of the polar dunes, and some items are related to others as we would expect on Earth. Cataloging the total sum of the Mars features may take longer than this century, but it is underway, and a testimony to the careful missions underway. We have started an historical process. Life on Earth will never be the same. History will begin again in the twenty-first century, with a broader perspective of our place in the cosmos, as Carl Sagan was prone to tell us. Mr Sagan would be proud of this work underway, and our accomplishments, as humanity.
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Location x-14400 , y=17250 , sharpened to 6.5, size set to 2 to 1, small adjustments after the correct the poor color balance.
Early explorers will bear testimony to the care required in the mission to catalog Mars natural history.
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I will return to the location at reply #1 with additional closeups shortly. I have a collapsing editor program which is slowing my work on enlargements.
Careful attention to detail, and safety, is necessary in this work.

A 400% enlargement of the bright material found between the dunes. This is a closeup of the location above, x=14700 , y=17200.
This is 4 to 1 in the IAS viewer by ITT, provided through NASA and the Arizona.edu website link on the HiRISE site archive/gallery/catalog.
The original is at PSP_010546_2615 , and closeups must be viewed with a JP2 viewer for the detail seen here.
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A smaller version of the image above. This would be equivalent to a 200%, or 2x sized image from the HiRISE standard. The image here is altered sunstancially in the brighter tones, and gives a better view of the tubular structure of the bright material growth aspects. It resembles the smaller variety of items we found along the rover paths toward the equatorial zone, and may or may not be related to those items.
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A view at 400%, or 4 to 1, of the growth tips in infra-red and red color receptors, without the blue-green spectrum band. The visual blue-green band can be the worst for detail in these HiRISE photos fairly often.
I had to adjust a color balance, and adjust it again in a photo editor, but surface textures are presented better than the smaller images.
Notice the very dark cores of the tubules which are tipped apparently by ribbed wide openings.
This entire section of bright material has liquid flow distortions across it.
The image has been rotated during this process, and the actual vertical orientation is not yet ascertained. The liquids seem to flow from the dunes onto the bright material. The bright materials are generally horizontal, which would make the tubules nearly horizontal.
Some of the bright material is cracked and fissured where liquids flowed across it, affected only in the areas where the flow channels are passing across.
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I'll work on a color balance for this band selection.
There are other item types to present as well, as time permits.

Liquid flows on Mars in real time, within the past few years. No dust cover, no fill of recesses, no margin dunes or ripples building. The flow lanes are clear of dust, with patterned surfaces showing fissures.

The darkest parts of the IR bands are the tubule cores.

Related links for current news releases on Anoxic water, iron mineral growths, bacterial presence in the waters, and a suggestion that Mars may be found to harbor life ubder the surface where it was presumed it would be found if it ever was discovered in these missions. The news item describes deep iron bearing mines on Earth, where iron was deposited prior to high oxygen content in the Earth's atmosphere.
These bright materials between dunes carry a great volume of liquid, ice, and moisture in transition, causing deposits to be formed at times. The weather, and planetary processes varying conditions, probably control much of the growth progress.
The liquids which are present may not properly be called water, as H2O may be a minor component, and caustic or active gases may be an alternative item in movement in the building of the tubular structures. Showing these are not solid mineral cores will be impossible without manned or robotic selective sampling landings.

Iron is one of the few minerals which becomes more supersaturated as the water temperature falls. Most all other minerals will drop out of the water solution upon the temperature dropping. This would leave a heavy content of iron in any Martian water which occured in transition if the iron was available as a solution addition at any formation temperature which would become colder in cycles. The formations of the Martian minerals we have found on Mars in the MER rover and various satellite missions would be present in the Mars dunes almost certainly, possibly actively forming now, but is liquid water, and possibly life-like processing causing the bright material to be built?

Are these tubes, or rod-like shapes, similar to the hollow tubules found in the Phoenix mission microscope images, and are the dark cores in these large tubules of bright material carrying fine dark core wiry growths found in bright material tubules as were present in the Phoenix mission microscopy images?

Can we jump in scale between items tens of microns in diameter, and many feet, even tens of feet in diameter? Are the two items the same? Do they have the same cause of formation?

Groups announcing detailed assessment of the place of ice and liquid water on Mars over time is now a routine occurance. The purity of Mars ice at the poles.
The place of water upwelling locations, or localized stable water spots, many known as suspected sites of liquids as seen from orbiter instrument results.
Additional to the steady production of images and instrument date from other missions, these HiRISE images from the MRO are showing the effects of translucent ice-like mineral structures and growths which have an organizing effect upon these bright material deposits found between the dunes near the poles of Mars. The tubular barrel shaped, cylindrical structures and the smaller donut shaped rings of the material which are at times found on the ends of the tubular items, are partly translucent, appearing as a non-pure ice type content variety of material in the polar reaches among dunes. The dune ripples can actually be seen through the physical thickness of the organized growths at places. Minerals can be very transparent, or translucent, even in thick deposits, but it is very rare for a non-ice to have the transparency throughout it's mass of many feet.
Another view of the same location, all the sensor frequency bands of HiRISE color images, at close to the 'auto balance' color adjustment function of the viewer. This was 'unsharp mask' adjusted, and sharpened slightly, to give better detail of the smaller circular ring-shaped surface assemblies on the main shapes.
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Here is an easier contrasty version of the growths in the prior few entries.
I am having difficulty in presenting these as any appearance other than the very bland low contrast items which they consist of. This image was taken from the IAS viewer at a sharpened setting of 6.0, and processed in a photo editor to give a contrasty gradient of lighting for the lowest of tones predominately. It is not as it is seen on Mars, therefore. These nearly appear as simple shadows in the normal linear and less contrasting original.
The basics of why the dust/dune ripples are altering to a higher organized state, is one of the most important processes on Mars, as it may be the crucible of pre-biology, in action even in current time.
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I'll try to find other locations and items within this full frame larger image.
There is a conical mound at an angle to horizontal which was interesting, and which I passed up in the topic image location. I'll try to find a color balanced viewable closeup of that item type to present.