Phoenix on Mars

Are those the houses of the little Who's?

Sol 110 soil's journey from the ground to the OM:

I've been wanting to do one of these for some time.

Weirdness from start to finish.

Er, zoost, I have no idea what we are looking at -- and I dare say neither do any of the Phoenix team!

sol 111 TEP animation:

with links to 3D and montage of interesting color pictures as the sunlight fades.

My guess is it is the jolt of current that makes the soil move - not a settling of the soil as the TCP is pressed into the soil.

Er, about the color:

I'm really, really not sure about that green. Come on NASA, show us the "Earth color" of this interesting area!

Beautiful stuff Horton! Thanks!

The "jolt of current that makes the soil move" might be a change in static electricity. The probe is probably grounded or is it? Whether it is grounded or not... it has batteries and current running through it constantly.
It is inevitable that the probe has it's own static charge which can react with the adjacent martian grains. Opposites attract,... like charges repel...right? Just like a magnet...I think.

Noticable forces of static attraction/repulsion that move grains might not be that unusual in such a low humidity.

I was talking about this static thing before and suggested we might be seeing a kind of (what I'm calling) a beanbag particle repulsion/attraction phenomena.

People that lived through the seventies might recall the bean bag chair. It's a kind of squishy roundish thing you sit in).
They used to be filled with small styrofoam balls the size of BBs of smaller (BB gun BBs)

If you ever pop a big hole in these beanbag chairs when it is very dry in your house the little styrofoam balls will spill out.

When you try to clean up the mess there will be little balls of styrofoam attracted to your hand and other balls of styrofoam that will be repelled by your hand. Some of those little styrofoam bits are almost impossible to grab until you chase them down and wear down their charge. Some stryofoam bits have the same charge as your hand and would be repelled, other bits would have an opposite charge and would be attracted.

The vicinity of the probe's moving parts to the soil surface may actually cause some particles to move through static reaction.
Hort, I think you were talking about something like this before too.

It's amazing how little we understand about how static forces in the dry Martian desert where temperature, humidity, static, etc. vary dramatically in (yet to be discovered)zoned areas ranging from the immediate subsurface to a few feet above the martian surface.

Regarding reply 442:
The lower right image and other images that I have seen that seem to have things growing in them are fantastic! It looks like it could be either biological or non-biological.

Biological structures like plant roots, fungi, etc. branch in linear and/or radial branches.

But so do many salts/minerals.

There are kits/projects where you can grow "crystal gardens" with salts that look similar in structure to some of the Mars images.
Google (image) search: grow crystal garden

You will see structures like this:

&imgrefurl=http://department.monm.edu/portfolio/ksheets/crystal%2520garden.htm&h=480&w=640&sz=31&hl=en&start=8&um=1&usg=__EvZAeV16EiyMSnQd9Apvsn4FqPg=&tbnid=yM5HfYN1UVtcnM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgrow%2Bcrystal%2Bgardeb%26ndsp%3D20%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4GGLR_enUS244US244%26sa%3DN

I think we should look for the somewhat magnetic mineral, such as manganese for the branching, dust and minerial con=vered globs.

the same mineral thats responcible for desert varnish. along with a "metallogenium personatum" type biological type helper.

jpl is also interested in this mineral.

Yes manganese is likely!

Are they dropping dirt in the trench or what is going on.

Fred

Trench changes in a little over an hour.

Fred

sol 113@22:00

I never get tired of playing with sunrises and sunsets - here or on Mars. The light is always dramatic and fleeting - like life.

Sol 113 icy soil in a scoop - hold the sprinkles.

saaaay, what's that "white stuff" in the scoop? Who ordered that?

Look at that sunset! Wow! Distant Alto-stratus. Thanks Hort.

The white stuff in the bucket is ice that looks quite healthy. Most be that thin dry atmosphere. This simply can not be there and you should not see it. Stop posting it for others to see that should not see it. Every one knows that during the day the humidity is 0. Damn man.

Fred

Ah.

The white stuff was scraped from the trench.

Notice that the last time in the trench animation is 7:26 and the first time in the scoop montage in reply 449 is 7:46.

Also notice that the white stuff at 6:33 not scraped is still white at 7:26.

Also also note the numerous "glints" in the trench.

I wonder what the plan is for this stuff? It looks to be "just" surface frost - not icy soil. Were they deliberately trying to get a sample of frost??

Er, just noticed I forgot to include a link in reply 443 to this montage of RAC color images during the TCP measurment.

Wait a minute. That stuff has blown. That means that it is not fixed to the surface as frost would be. What we are looking at is the First snow of the season. It would appear a snow showers has pasted the landing site. Wow.

sizes/o/

Fred

Sigh. Just when I think I understood what I am looking at...

OK, the image of the soil dumped in the trench in reply 447 was taken at 7:48 -- between the two RAC exposures in reply 449. Notice all the very bright flashes from dumped the soil.

So the timeline is:

7:26 - soil scraped from trench
7:46 - little soil and white stuff in scoop
7:48 - soil dumped in trench
7:51 - little soil and white stuff in scoop

The only thing that makes any sense to me at all is that the soil scooped was first dumped somewhere else, the scoop was then imaged and then the soil was picked up again and dumped in the trench and then the scoop was imaged again.

What could possibly be the reason for this action? Perhaps testing if the frosted soil could collected?

Sorry got a little excited imagine that. Pay attention to this area in Horts’s image. A micro-drift forms later in the image. This means it is snow and not frost as the surface is not the condensation nuclei.

Frost don’t blow brother.

Fred
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3185/2869998831_17811d8bd1_o.gif

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/main.php

They are going to try moving a rock and looking under it. This was suggested by Horton some time ago.

My quote from reply 383, "or moisture sinks as in Under rocks".

pat my own back, thank you.

sol 116 3D of er, er:

I challenge any "rock guy" to study this in 3D for 10 minutes and describe what he is seeing -- without the geobabble.

RAC and SSI - eye to eye:

This montage made me laugh. I think someone who has a sense of the absurd planned this sequence.

Here is a RAC 3D animation before and after a scoop soil press. Be warned that most of the picture was in deep shadow so the JPGies are particularly nasty.

But it looks like the soil was smacked around, stuck with a fork and then grilled.

( So, you won't talk. We'll see about that...)

Hort

I did an anaglyph of your 458 above that came out quite well. There are really a lot of weird things in that image. I wonder if it is the material scraped from under the rock? and if so what is the ice covering or was it ice before the rock was removed?

Winston