New images at Exploratorium this afternoon. Some Nav- and Pancam of the drive onto the outcrop. But importantly, she did a RAT and made a series of MI images...

--Bill

The RAT hole autostitched - no bluberries as we know them - just as Squyres said earlier.
Click to view attachment

This is getting interesting. Like, what are the dark inclusions? Same stuff as the cobbles?

They should put the micro-micro-imager on those dark globs and see what they are exactly.. oh, wait. Can I fly to Mars yet?

There were the same dark spots from Eagle and Endurance, but those were similarly larger than these ones, as it would seem relatively the same size as the bloobs one the surface are, (im assuming the dark spots are sawed-off blueberries). the bloobs are so much smaller (and irregular) as we go south...

Those look like Captain Crunch Frosted Miniberries to me. Well, forget the frosted part.

The irregular miniberries are back, so what does that mean? It would be odd for them to appear again further up-section.

Here is an Autostitch mosaic of the pre-RAT area. It appears to me that the concretions are preferentially aligned with the bedding planes.

edited to add: The bedding plane alignment is most apparent in the image pair Bill posted above. Also, we aren't at Mogollon yet, are we?

All around baby-blueberries here?

Tried to match your two MI pans in a GIF:
(1,02 MB / 4s per frame) http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/ratmogo.gif

It's difficult because the course of the crack isn't exact the same already in few millimetres depth.

Not yet.
Let me take this opportunity to remind this:



Somebody else wants to propose a sol?

I'll say 643......

....by the way the total drive distance, according to the latest STATUS REPORT is 3.99 miles.

You're right. We ain't there yet. Ole Bill jumped the gun. What can I say? I was giddy about getting to this side of Erebus and pulling out the handlens and rock hammer...

We can discuss the strat- and lith- of this area in the context of tying what we saw at Eagle/Endurance, and at the Erebus Highway, and what we _might_ have seen at the Fourlane as we approach Mogollon. If Doug wants to (or can) rename this "Erebus MI's", fine; otherwise, we can use this as a pre-Mogollon discussion.

This outcrop (have it been named yet?) impresses me as similar to what we saw at the Fourlane: bedded and with less-visible blueberries. It is like the outcrops at the Erebus Highway in that a RAT shows smaller and less spherical blueberries and ghost-berries.

We (Aldo??) need to compile a list of the sites and lithologies we've see this far, much like was done for the Columbia Hills. I'm losing track of the players...

We need a close look at those cobble lag deposits while we're here...

I'm attaching an overview image of the zones we've seen recently.

--Bill

An update from the MER/JPL site:

"Sols 633 and 634 (Nov. 4 and 5, 2005): The two-sol plan is to kick off the robotic arm campaign at Olympia. The plan includes grinding a target called "Kalavrita" with the rock abrasion tool, inspecting the target with the microscopic imager both before and after the grind, and using the panoramic camera to take images for a mosaic. Output from the solar panels on sol 633 was 528 watt hours."


Kavalrita is a city in Greece, as Olympia is a mountain in Greece. Clearly, we ain't in Colorado, yet.

--Bill

Actually, Olympia is the place where the ancient olympic tooks place. The mountain that housed the gods is Olympus.

Did anyone bring a hammer and chisel? I really want to split open those layers...

Aside from which, Oppy's RAT still seems to be going great.

That's on my "to do" list, Bill, but I'll be moving it up in priority! Hopefully before the end of the month I'll have something.

Those MI's are really interesting. It looks like there are two types of spherules: The larger, lighter toned ones similar to what was seen at Eagle and Endurance and the smaller, darker more irregular shaped ones. They both seem to crosscut bedding planes without deforming them, so they must both be products of post deposition diagenesis.

Indeed, these latest RAT MI's are interesting. We see subtle yet profound changes in the lithology (blueberries) and the character of the evaporite. I keep planning to sit back and go through the differences between what we've seen at Eagle, Endurance and Erebus (and misc points in between). I believe that we've moved down in the stratigraphic section and could also be looking at lateral (facies) changes. It will be interesting to see what we find at the bluff at Mogollon; I believe (and/or hope) that there an underlying dark unit and that might help to define the history of this area. But Oppy can take her time getting there; every rock she looks at on the way is another piece of the puzzle.

--Bill

There are several new MIs on Exploratorium, 11/12/05. The MI's are of this
cobble...

--Bill

Here's a quick autostitch of the cobble.
Reckless

So what might these two white splotches on the cobble be? (I turned it round as my neck was aching).

They might be nothing special, or they might be something special. Fly me up to Mars and I'll find something special, I guarantee it. Perhaps if I sit in this chair and close my eyes reaaaaaal tight until my brains almost pop out of my eyes, I'll be there. IT WORKED!

Those splotches are the remnants of dead Martian lichen (basically). Enjoy.

The cobble is dark, fine-grained, and, applying the "duck criteria", my first impression is that it is basalt. Those white areas are either reaction rims around weathering minerals or amygdules. That dark area on the left appears to be a weathering crust. The prevailing wind direction (NW) comes from the upper left and aeolian erosion can bee see on that side. The underlying blueberries are of a size consistent with what we see in the local evaporite.

I've attached a pan of the MI images with an inset showing the structure of the crust.

Too early to make any firm judgements, but it looks like a rock. We'll be seeing other examples...

--Bill

Chunks of a freeze-dried Mars Bar.. .. obviously!

Thanks for the straight response Bill. Amygdules being associated with flowing water would be exciting although that's probably in the "Given an inch, take a mile" category of judgements.
Teleporting-Mike's lichen assessment would be even better of course.Careful now, don't get carried away

"Amygdules" was my first thought on seeing this, but was used more in the context of "mineral-lined cavities". But taken wrong, it could be a dangerous description since it implies things that might not be.

We'll see where second looks at this go.

I like freeze-dried Mars Bar....

--Bill

Well... one thing we're seening in abundances are FLR's.

Back in the mists of ancient history.... USGS and other geologists were giving some probable future moonwalking astronauts training in field geology. Astronauts, supposedly as usual, were emitting NASA acronyms in every other sentence and the geologists were getting tired of auditory alphabet soup. So they hatched a small conspiracy.....

The geologists gathered in a cluster and were jabbering excitedly about this FLR, handing a rock back and forth and constantly referring to the FLR.

Finally, an astronaut had to ask: "What's a FLR?"

The geologist with the rock held it up, threw it off over his shoulder, and pronounced: "FUNNY LOOKING ROCK". The astronauts had been HAD.

(I've recreated this story from memory, ghods know where I got it from, but I'm sure I've embellished it, but the essense is unaltered)

And yes. Mars has a lot of FLR's.

Another thought on the possibility of lichens: this Astrobiology mag article implies that they're pretty hardy beasts, but may have trouble with re-entry ... however may these lichens arrived on Mars in 1976? Has terraforming accidentally started already?

There is a thread on the lichen space survivors here, complete with mission images:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1670

As for lichen on Mars that came with Viking, I don't see how. Those probes were seriously sterilized. I can imagine a few hardy microbes that might have made it, but not lichen spores. And even then I have trouble imagining them surviving on the planet's surface for very long.

It's impossible to say, really.. but knowing that chunks of Earth and Mars are transferred between one another on a fairly regular basis, it seems to me that any possible terraforming would have started already. Then too maybe we were originally Mars-formed, and so any 'terraforming' of Mars will just be re-Mars-forming, or just plain re-forming.

But yeah, wait and see, that's all we can really do. I don't see any massive lichen blooms on Mars just yet..

Could be that this is another meteorite? It looks much darker, more compact and finer grained than the other rocks in the area, the depressions on the surface look like regmaglypts, and the line surface texture is not unlike a fusion crust (but could also be simply desert varnish).

Jon

It might be, but I'm truthfully not sure what these cobbles are. Oppy has looked at two examples thus far and it would be nice to look at other specimens. I'm sure we'll see more as Oppy nears the bluff at Mogollon. The one thing that argues against meteorite is that these cobbles tend to occur as apparent lag deposits.

--Bill

And, fwiw, Squyres had already stated back in August that the cobbles aren't meteorites, they're Martian, and unique, but we're still waiting for more details...!

That's the quandry; we know more what they aren't than what they are...

--Bill

Actually, lags would be a good place to look for meteorites.

The cobble seen in August was a long way away, just because that may not of been a meteorite says nothing about this one. Did it have the possible regmaglypts and fusion crust? Anyone got an image for comparison?

Jon

It seems that Oppy looked at two cobbles on the Erebus Highway; attached are MI's of each.

--Bill

Those look much more like normal rocks, they lack the meteorite-like features (the possible regmaglypts and fusion crust).

Jon

Current Mission Status at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...tml#opportunity :



More MI's at Exploratorium on 11/18/05, haven't looked closely, yet.

"Antistasi" is a Greek term for "resistance fighters" (more or less), in keeping with the Olympia theme. I originally thought "Anastasi" since the theme for the upcoming region is Arizona.

For your FWIW file...

--Bill

The MI's are the rest of the series made on the cobble Antistasi last week; however, there was an L456 Pancam of that target, which is appended below.

--Bill

Actually if you are referring to the South Western U.S. "Ancient Ones" the correct spelling is Anasasi.....

If you are ever out that way, (it's not too far from the Grand Canyon) you simply must plan for a day or two climbing in and around some of those ruins -- just amazing.

Actually it should be "Anasazi"

tty

ElkGroveDan

last year September, I was on a 4 week vacation in the Western USA and stayed 1 night

at the Anasazi motel along highway 89 on our way to the Grand Canyon the next day.

The stay was to short for seeing the ruins. Maybe on a later vacation?

jvandriel

More MIs appear today at exploratorium : http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...ger/2005-11-22/

The first four show a nice black ribbon in the rock, better seen here, which I'm sure our resident geologists will find interesting

The last four MIs show another target, but include a black splot that covers the same sand spot area in all of them. Any idea what causes this ?

I think it is caused by the contact sensor on the MI

Thanks dot.dk, that makes sense

Didn't you read Treasure Island as a boy? It's a pirate thing.

The Black Spot

I think that the black ribbon is just a shadowed fracture; however, I notice that the blueberry distribution is increasing to it's former level.

Could it be that we're looking at a new type or variety of blueberry, the b l a c k b e r r y ?



--Bill

Treasure Island as a boy ?
I 've read just a couple of months ago Long John Silver by Bjorn Larsson, where probably the black spot is also mentioned, and still could not make the pirate connection

The black line is just a crack -- inverted by lighting and the way the human mind works. Rotate the image 180 degrees and you'll be amazed.

Scott

Yes, baby, yes baby, go for it.

And here I am stuck with bad (SLOW) modems at my ISP node and all these pretty images a-waiting.

--Bill

<ashamed>
Thanks Scott, this is the third time this happens to me with an image. You can't teach an old dog new tricks .....
</ashamed>

What an incredible outrop! Stunning eroded rocks, look at this enhanced anaglyph:

That is one of the best analglyphs I've seen yet. What a treat!

I did have to lean back a little more than usual for my eyes to get comfortable. Did you increase the layer separation or something? (I'm not complaining, but it is a bit different).