MECA-OM Images

This sol 72 amination of image 3 in reply 72 is puzzling?

Er, Winston, Brian, which substrate was this?

It looks like a magnetic substrate because of the grain clumping -- but I'm not yet "up to speed" on decoding wheel position and substrate.

Originally I thought this was "just" a focus sequence -- but the sample wheel was moved also ( had to do a scaled rotation registration ), so maybe just the operation of the sample wheel actuator was enough to cause the larger partcles to move.

Vibration? Magnetic forces? Er, the whos are having a party?

Any speculation about what the planned observation was?

Notice that in the first 3 minutes the movement was toward the ( magbetic? ) center, followed by a downward movent of only the larger particles.

I sure would like to know what's going on here.

Hi Hort

Nice Anim!!

I think the OM imagery is still a work in progress.

The site with the OM images is
here

If you go to a sol on which OM images were taken it shows a link "additional info on OM images" ">here

That information includes a link to a table that was developed for the OM's taken up to sol 30 only here

One has to sometimes interpolate values where the substrate rotation selection is not exactly as indicated in that table.

Re. the sol 72 OMs. I also found that there was significant movement between the first three images. However it appears that that movement is primarily related to the diferences in "translation focus position" between those images.

i.e. all of the first three images have a substrate rotation of 11411 but differ in translation focus position. The first one is 48311; the second one is 48611 and the third one is 48911.

To determine the substrate, mouse over the highlighted image. A text box comes up with substrate selection rotation; focus position and illumination. I then match the substrate selection rotation figure with the nearest such figure in the table. In this case it is an exact match. In most it is'nt. This translates to OM 57; Strong Magnet found on the second page of the pdF table.

Hope this helps

Winston

Hi Hort

The links have again been messed up

They should be

here

here

here

In addition to the focusing changes there might have been some other changes

Forgot to say that there appear to be significant differences between the conformation, spotting, and other characteristics between the particles in the first 3 images; all of which are reasonably well focused individually and that they seem to have chosen the least distinctive focus position for the final RGB shots taken

Winston

Winston, thanks for the sample wheel table.

Here is a sol 67 OM pan with lots of interesting white filaments and circular thingies:

brian, cam you give me even one non-biological Earth soil example that has thin filaments in the soil?

Hort

You are asking Brian to do the impossible. There are no natural non-biological earth soil samples. Even dried and sterilized soils may have thin filaments. Practically every soil examined on Earth have microbes of some type or the other

My working hypothesis, in looking at the soil samples from Mars, is that Mars is similar to Earth in that some putative microbes have developed climax biota at or near the surface throughout Mars, from the Viking site to Meridiani to Gusev and now to the Phoenix site.

That biota is visible to us in the SODs, circles, filaments, strings of spheres, blue discolourations around rocks, etc., that we can see, and through the effects they have in producing very friable looking cohesive soil, because it is made up of basically primitive microbes that are too small to be shown up by the OM and earlier MI's.

Again, If Levin's LR experiment did indeed find life on Mars, the above scenario is what would be expected.

The perchlorate story is important in that it opens up the possibility that there might be microbes on Mars that are similar to the ones on Earth that utilize perchlorates as a substrate and this is highly testable in Martian simulation chambers on Earth.

Winston

sol 67 OM pan of AFM grid:

If I were choosing an AFM subject, I would target the whitish, radially symmetric feature in the center. Notice is seems to have a whitish "tail".

Winston, re: Earth soil and filaments. That's what I thought.

Why are the rock guys being so, er, hard headed, about the soil filaments?

The issue is not one of belief but of observation.

Perhaps Mars is as dead as the Antarctica dry valleys, or the Pacific abyssal zone and there is no possibility of life - er, bad examples.

Hort

A truly beautiful panorama of the OMs. Great!!!

Winston

sol 73 OM pan of more filaments on AFM grid:

with a link to a UV animation of fluorescent filaments

If this is Earth contamination then the lot of the technicians who assembled MECA ought to be fired.

sol 73 OM pan between sample cells:

Bummer.

It looks like the paint flaking off the numbers might be the source of the fluorescent particles and filaments in the OMs.

Good job guys.

Hi Hort

Great sol 73 image. Not as well focused as the sol 72 one but richer in terms of filaments.

I wonder if anyone could work out the probability of capturing about 5 very similar filaments in terms of length and tube diameter from a sample of just a few cubic mms of soil sprinkled onto one nanobucket OM if those filaments were produced by typical minerals on Mars.

Winston

Hi Hort

I just looked at the sol 73 releases.

There is a veritable cornucopia of bio-like objects in some of the sol 73 OMs.

In fact, I think it is possible that we are now seeing the soil binding principle up close in the image below and that these things may be related to the sod. The individual images that made up the RGB came from the weak magnet substrate rotation area (12141) although there is an off chance that it might instead be the silicone substrate.

I'll start to process some of the other images tomorrow but a quick look at some of them suggests that there might be some whos whispering.

Winston

Horton, how can we make stereo of these OM's?
\

I tried with some of the overlaps, but to no avail.

Hort,
re 119, Good observation at reply 130, it has to be a possibility. Fibrous flourescent minerals? Hydrated Calcium Sulphate for a start (fibrous gypsum), some of the asbestos group. Erionite. Illite which is an alteration product of feldspar and others.
Any soil which includes weathered fibrous minerals will of necessity include fibres. Magnetic attraction can also give the appearance of fibres. But mineral fibres in soil are not a good thing.

Brian, thanks for the list of fibrous flourescent minerals.

I have to admit I was quite disappointed when I did the sample wheel image and realized what the OM team was looking for. I forgive the sample wheel designers for their lapse. It illustrates the Herculean task of eliminating contamination in any space mission.

mann, you need a few degrees of eye separation and some subject depth to "see" 3D, and the 1 mm of movement of the sample wheel coupled with the multi-cm distance to the OM and the 10s of micron subject depth of the OM targets provides virtually no 3D.

But, here is the world's first ( and last? ) 3D OM:

with a link to the full offset 3D.

What I find interesting about this image is the constancy of the color of the pixels, given the changes in lighting and viewing geometry - plus the dreaded JPGification of the images.

Hi Mann, Brian

What's your take on the geological or otherwise physical origin of the structures in the sol 73 composite below, not necessarily of the circled areas but the main mass? It appears to be weakly magnetic but is also captured in small pieces on the silicone and other non-magnetic media. It seems to dominate the soil particles captured.

Winston

Hi Winston,
The weak and strong magnets have been included because there are so few magnetic minerals. Magnetic attraction, particularly with the weak magnet screams iron component. We know that magnetite, olivine and pyroxene are in the Martian dust and signal a dry formative environment while hematite normally requires water.

But there are a minerals that while not inherently magnetic will be attracted to a magnet. Copper, oxides. Try googling paramagnetism. I don't know the parameters of the magnets and the intent of the design, but the strong would have more luck attracting paramagnetic material and even then the induced field may not be significant. So the provenance of the material attracted to the weak magnet will involve iron.

Magnetic attraction of small particles will create all kinds of shapes and naturally on the magnets the magnetic material will dominate. And like all other materials it will adhere to different substrates. The thing is that just looking at an OM JPEG, without all other information means that all we can say is 'oh isn't that pretty'. I await the detailed papers that will flow with anticipation.

Hi Brian

Thanks! Sounds very reasonable.

Winston

sol 74 Extended Depth of Field:

OK, now how about the same exercise in a color panorama?

sol 73 OM pan:

This panorama could have used the EDF touch.

Er, why has the soil "bunched up" in the center?