Phoenix on Mars

Water???

I immediately thought of the sacred song A River Flows Between when I saw this image:
sol 31 LB97RABC as soon as I saw these scoop scrape images:

Er, does anyone know what else besides a liquid "flowing between" the small scoop "chatter" scrapes could leave the dark streaks in every filter!

Here is the "before" 3D and here is a before / after 3D animation.

Notice that the um, dark "flow-like" areas begin only where the new scoop scrape starts and ends immediately where it stopped....

The 3D shows that the flow is "downslope" towards the center of the trench.

This is I think these are the most exciting images I have processed in some time!

Hi Hort

Very Interesting. I think you'll find similar water darkened areas in some of my earlier pics.

Here's a sol 31 colouration, made of an R1 1024 x1024 image and a 512x512 colour composite registered by imageJ. Note the blue green specks on a few rocks and in some areas of soil as well as the strange rocks.

Winston

er, Winston, I don't think the RGB images are aligned correctly.

Did you try animating the registered stack after the turbo registration? Zoom in to 300-400% on a very bright or very dark point and see how much details "jump around".

Here is my version.

As for the "water"...

I also noted darkened areas previously -- but what's different about this darkening is that it occurs in a flat area immediately after a presumed ice layer was exposed in the "heat" of the day.

The before sequence was taken in the morning between 09:56:30 and 10:09:19 and the after sequence was taken in the afternoon between 15:46:42 and 15:59:09.

A RAC sequence of the trench taken between 12:10:24 and 12:15:46 shows the dark stains -- so the soil scrape occurred between 10-12AM in the warmest part of the day where perhaps -- just perhaps -- the ambient soil temperature was between 0 and 3 C and ... voila! soil getting "wet".

To me the very, very interesting feature is the soil stayed dark.

The presumed water released did not evaporate or turn back to ice -- it was absorbed by the soil and changed some internal chemical state of the soil. ( Hydrated soil?)

If anyone is interested I can post a composite 3D RAC of the trench after the scrape.

Hi Hort

Excellent image. You the man!!

The registration was horrible in the original images and my imageJ attempt seemed to have semi-corrected it so I did'nt try the animation.

Re. the water, I agree with your analysis.

Winston

hey horton, u can also try posting on here

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=0a2f912acfe241529aabe32d90d104b6&showforum=14

Here's another sol 31 composite from imageJ registration and colourization of an R1 image.

What I'm trying to show here are the numerous very small spheres, filaments, etc. on the soil surface. In the inset the magnification is 1.5X. These objects do not look like ordinary soil particles to me and do not resemble the Spirit and Opportunity SODs.

I'm really looking forward to the TEGA analyses results. I would cautiously bet that they will find lots of Organic material at or near the soil surface at various spots in Phoenix wonderland.

Winston

Winston, much better resolution...

Er, I seem to have infected you with circle-itis -- a highly contagious Martian meme.

My guess is that Mars life gets along mostly without orgranics ( just as it gets along mostly without water ) -- perhaps just a bit to reproduce from time to time.

But I agree with you that the very preliminary wet chemistry lab results has already destroyed the theory explaining the Viking results.

Hi Hort

The No-Organics myth is just another component of the superoxides myth. Essentially, with just slight exaggeration, The Viking GCM machine was fatally flawed, but the results it provided were in concert with the superoxides myth so it has persisted till now. I may very well be wrong but I think that Phoenix will also burst that bubble.

Re. Circle-itis, I think we contracted it independently around the same time, when we first saw the images. I wonder why no-one else has commented on them as they are so plain to see without really high magnification. Jaded? won't take a risk on being wrong? Scared of the Just rock types?

Winston

Hort

I forgot to mention re. the resolution of the last image. I am just following the master. I started off with the imageJ animation, saw that the images needed to be aligned, used your prescription, with modifications, for aligning them and then exported the images to PHotoshop and did my usual processing from there. It looks as if it would be much easier to do everything in imageJ but I'm still not totally comfortable with that program.

Winston

visible / infrared 3D view of trench "Snow White" after sol 32 expansion:

I honestly don't understand why UA clains they have scraped to icy soil" in this trench. None of the views of this trench in any wavelength "look" like the ice in Goldilocks".

To refresh your memory, here is a visible / infrared view of Goldilocks on sol 25:

Er, in "Goldilocks", "ice" is "bright" but in "Snow White" "icy soil" is "dark"???

I'm sooo confused.

Here is a detail of the infrared changes to the dark "icy" area from sol 31 to 32 after expansion:

and here is the complete animation.

So water ice is "bright" but soil mixed with ice is "dark"?

And they know this how?

Perhaps because of the "flow lines" in the soil where the ice melted when uncovered?

Perhaps the next news conference will reveal the logic of calling this "dark" soil "icy soil"

horton>>>

I too have noticed this anomaly. Seems to me that any exposed ice sublimates at the Mars atmosphere[right at exposure-face] 'through' the soil so it looks wet and dark, then the soil turns the same color as the surrounding soil adjacent. Mind you that next ice face is buried just beneath the Mars soil to stop sublimation. Just consider the whole scope of the image as regular ordinary 'ice' in soil, then you can't go wrong. Eventually it will melt and evaporate.

I actually don't have a problem with it. But if there is a catalyst for sublimation, that would be the interesting part! The soil seems to hold a special property that protects the ice from the sublimation thing that it does.

Just look at the soil, its a confusing mass of dirt we don't have on Earth! It ain't sand from the dessert, it ain't peat moss from the tundra with ice under.

Its Mars dirt. There may very well be known elements to scientists, but there is always the chance of another unknown in the mix.

Thanks for your insight and pics to go with them. I look at all of them.

yt
dx

sol 32 animation of 8 hours of lighting changes in rock and soil near Phoenix:

This was created from 21 RAC images in 7 time blocks.

Er, I will not comment much, save to say that you have to give your mind time to digest this animation.

One of the oddest ( to me ) changes is a very thin straight line that brightens and then dims ( top center edge ). I think it is "real" -- but real what?

There are a number of interesting soil circles which seem to be very tiny mounds with rings of tiny stones on the circumference.

Maybe mini versions of the polygons?

Mars. Damn queer place.

er, what??

While I await todays Phoenix fix I thought I would look at some of the recent near field images...

what!?

sol 33 1x8 R1abc panorma:

These are R1 images colorized with 1/2 size RABC images. Lots and lots of registrations to bring out the details. This turned out to be a 4 hour project.

There are literally dozens of interesting features in this panorama. I will load the companion 3D images tomorrow. Gott'a rest, gott'a rest...

OK, just one...

Er, why are the stones in the gully-like depression on the right hand side of the pan all oriented so that their long side are basically parallel to the trench?

Say, doesn't this happen in flowing liquids???

Hey Horton,
Yes these gullys certainly had water flowing through them at some time. There is no doubt in my mind. The somewhat rounded rock and orientation in the gully are a dead give away. I had noted it earlier and your latest pan removes any doubt in my mind.

It's possible that these gullys formed by flowing water like surficial streams on Earth.

I think that it is more likely that these stream beds formed below surface ice or maybe even a small glaciel-type formation of ice. That way the water would be able to flow for longer and the increased pressure would stem the water evaporation at higher temperatures.

There are many instances of rivers, streams, and lake deposits on Earth that formed beneath glaciers. I just drilled a 140 foot hole through one of them 2 weeks ago with a sonic drill rig (A drumlin in Kalamazoo, MI).

Thanks rpage for a plausible explanation for the flow of water under glacial ice on Mars.

Speaking of water, here is the sol 33 visible / infrared view of the trench "Snow White" after the latest round of scraping and rasping.

There are several patches of a darker "blue / purple " soil with one very interesting meandering streaks in the infrared view.

Oh boy oh boy! Can hardly wait for some of that stuff sampled.

OOOps. Here is that sol 33 3D of Snow White:

I got so excited by Bob's explanation of how a macro amount of water might flow on Mars that I forgot the picture!

Now I am even more interested in all the nearby weirdness. It's time to get down on my hands and knees and crawl around Phoenix...

Here are the 3D pairs for the sol 33 panorama in reply 214.

There is still missing data for a ninth ( and last?) frame on the right end of the panorama.

Speaking of data...

I would like to publically thank Kim Jenson, a Danish software developer, for modifying his excellent freeware program Advanced Renamer to allow renaming the University of Arizona Phoenix Images file names to their Prodict Id names.

He added a new tag ( called File Content ) at my request to his renaming methods and explained its use to extract parameters from file headers.

Again, KUDOs Kim! It was a pleasure working with you.

If anyone wants to be able to work with the very, very latest Phoenix images from the UA site you should Avanced Renamer 2.54 and learn how to use it.

I can post the details of the Phoenix files rename script and how to use it if there is interest.

Multi-layered rock and friends:

See image comments for, er, comments.

I have to admit, that one is a little stranger than average. Some stuff up there appears to be sorta technological in nature, of a past nature. Most curious items can be wished away, but a few cannot so easily. This approaches of of the few that does not add up very well, mineral wise.

The comments are well made, Horton.

I guess NASA is thinking about those flying monkey's again.

The crystal ball is before us all.