Burns cliff

Oppy getting closer to the weeping rock slab below Burns Cliff?

Hi Aldo12xu

Have this colour version of the one on your site:

[link]

I don't believe ground water has anything to do with these features. The problem with that is, if I have ground water and it manages to survive for billions of years and manages to come out of a little cliff, today the atmosphere of Mars is so cold and dry, water is gone instantly. It will either freeze or evaporate before it has time to trickle down and carve a little gully.

The idea of water coming from snow gets around all that. The water is in the snow. It's cold, for sure, but the snow acts as a blanket. It insulates to protect the melting water that is inside the snow. The surface is cold but the interior actually warms up and melts and trickles down through the snow possibly eroding the little gullies. You've brought along your own protective blanket to keep the water from just evaporating and freezing.

It's not really surface water, it's underneath a snow blanket. Snow comes and goes: snows on the surface, it melts, snow goes away, comes and goes. It just seems to work better, but it's only a model. Phil Christensen of ASU originally developed this idea for the site described in the attached link:

Of course , the atmosphere is now not suitable to flowing water, but the atmospheric pressure on Mars could be very variable, there may be times when Mars atmosphere has 10 times the current densitiy and that could have happenend during the last few 100000 years.

3 image L2/L5/L7 color Pan:

Small (0.3 MB) version

Large (1.4 MB) version

Original (5.1 MB) version

The thumbnail is at the approximate angle of the cliff. Yikes! Poor old Oppy must be hanging on by it's cleats.

Gives you a better appreciation of the minor miracle of driving to this site in the first place.

The linked images are not rotated to provide maximum resolution.

For those interested in 3D, I am working on a companion Right image.

post 93 and 105 show the extreme angle of this cliff face. I hadn't realized the angle was so high. Those mysterious dark sandy stripes actually might be simple dry flow from the cracks above, that makes a lot of sense, seeing how high the angle of the cliff is.

And, as far as horton's images go, I download and save all of them as he posts them. If you have been paying attention all along you chould have all the good ones. I think my collection of the high quality horticolor images is close to complete.

PS, Horton, you should compile a book out of these images. The raw data is in the public domain, so you own the copyright on the images you make. The main stream press has lost interest in this, so I think the public has been missing out on some of the really spectacular recent images .

A recent favorite of mine, actually from the NASA color pan but I adjusted the colors to get rid of the NASA trademark red sky:

http://www.web-a-photo.com/showpic.exe?ID=591903&invite=47d344a4a8fbcfa0edb3c3940ada5149

I think the big image is a couple of MB, so be warned.

carla, variabilites in atmospheric density seems like a reasonable conclusion, why not....dense (and warm) enough on a global basis for flowing water within the past 100,000 years, not sure...evidence? Under ice & snow, may be occuring as we type.

Ooops, here:

You're right, r.lewis, it's just fine-grained material sluffing off from upper layers. The source could be the one semi-contiunous dark layer and some of the broken darker blocks above it. Maybe this dark material is interstitial hematite that has been winnowed out from these sources.

Thanks for the colour photo, Microkid. As both your and Horton's photos seem to be close to true colour, the dark material at Burns Cliff is different in composition than the material forming the pasty flows.

3 image R1/R2 Right companion for reply 105:

Small (0.3 MB) version

Large (1.4 MB) version

Original (5.2 MB) version

Please do not download the larger versions unless you intend to study the image at 200%+ magnification.

When you guys are downloading my machine screeches to a halt and I can't create more images.

I am off to Meridiani to do a 3D full filter color image. I have put it off thinking more frames would become available at the last site -- but since Spirit has moved on, I don't think any more are forthcoming, so it's time to work with what's there.

Homer: Hello, my name is Mr. Burns. I believe you have a package for me.
Post office worker: And what is your first name, Mr. Burns?
Homer (slowly): I don't know.

Then, they water the mail.

It's interesting to contemplate that we now have so many more pictures and data from the surface of Mars than were ever taken of the surface of the moon. It must be at least a thousand-fold by now.

It says a lot for robotic probes. Of course we don't have any samples yet, but that will come.

Warning 2.3 MB link:

Damn the windows violations, full speed ahead.

> PS, Horton, you should compile a book out of these images. The raw data is in the public domain, so you own the copyright on the images you make.

An "analog book" is OK, but he could produce a CD of the images that would be 1001% more useful and easier to make. I'd pay.

I've got "many" horticolors, but I'm on
d i a l u p and I'm working a backlog.

Strange new world out there...

--Bill

Horton, I would also pay good money for a book or CD(s) of your images! After all, they are simply the best in all the land.

Maybe you could compile CD box sets and sell them out of Best Buy or something. A 3D coffee table book would also be nice!

Hort, I'd also like a cd but I'm not sure how much I can afford to pay, would you take the first born?

please
just kidding, except about the cd

Microkid if you really want a salty fluid flow I will give you one.

Re reply 85:

All I can see in these images is low, redoed mounds formed nu randomly oriented bedrock slabs. I see none of the classific gemorphological evidence of movement of wet sediments via slow or fast movement by wet sediment. The extremely low average temeratures at the site (about -30) preclude against an active layer more than a few mm deep. If water were present within a few mm of the surface, either as liquid or ice, it would have been detected in the first mini-TES scan. There is no evidence of water so far in mini-TES.

Re reply 88:

That image is evidence of either shrinkage or creep, or even both. It certianly isn't evidence of water. I have seen similar features on terrestrial slopes on the uphill side of boulders here on earth and they don't appear to be associated with seeps. These images are extremely interesting for this reason, but the are not IMPO, evidence of water.

Re reply 95:

I don't know, but would suspect episodic wind scour. See the wind ripples in the marginal troughs? But this does not rule out other processes operating as well.

The problem with all this enthusiasm for liquid water in Endurance crater is that the scale is wrong. Ephemeral films of moisture a few microns or 10's of microns thick are possible in summer here and in many other areas of Mars. We also see good evidence of episodic springs in Martian gullies where the gullies are metres across and hundreds of metres long. These present larger outflows from pressurised aquifers. An even half decent mechanism for liquid water at a scale of decimetres to metres is very difficult to get.

Cheers

Jon

Left (L2/L5/L7):

Right ( R1/R2):

So Jon, you think this, er, gully, is entirely the work of wind and gravity? If not just these two forces, then what other processes contribute?

I am very much a visual oriented entity -- do you have some Earth images of such "gullies" that are not water related in any way?

I am especially intrigued by the precise pooling of the dark dust in the depressed -- or should that be recessed? -- areas.