I'd also like to add my voice to those who have been congratulating NASA and JPL for last night's wonderful achievement.

Likewise, many congratulations are due on a truly brilliant recovery from the previous debacle...
which left us wondering about the risks of attempting a non-airbag landing.

Regarding the sparkly object on the horizon, recall that the interior of the backshell is very shiny silvery material (if the same as the Rovers') and those backshells both became inverted on impact, which made them so bright and caused long streaks of camera artifacts similar to what we see here.

Also, given the flat unobstructed terrian, I'll be surprised if the parachute isn't lying visible somewhere on the other side of the spacecraft, currently out of view....

Where can I get a model like the one shown at the press conference?

Great!

btw, there is a light near horizon at one of the pictures? Could it be a headshield or parachute?

http://www.space.fmi.fi/phoenix/ < I'm very happy becouse this is the first time when something from finland goes succesfully to groud of the Mars

I'd guess that we're seeing frost heave, plus wind deflation, plus ejecta from the crater to the east. Some pebbles look angular and some rounded. The frost polygons are reminescent of parts of Meridiani, no? Different origin, similar erosional processes.

--Bill

It does look reminiscent of the etched terrain, but I think the scales are different. This is flatter than Meridiani, and the vertical relief of each polygon looks pretty invariant. So what appears to be a sea of dune crests are really the darker sides of the polygons. My estimate last night of 30-50cm height looks to be a 10x over-estimate in the cold light of, er, early afternoon. I can't wait for anaglyphs showing the arm out, to provide scale. As to erosional processes - no, I don't think there's CO2 frost cracking / exfoliation at Meridiani, just aeolian erosion caused by slow moving airborne fines and saltation.

The darker fine material along the edges of the polygons where they slope downwards towards the "cracks", has a crust-like appearance in places. Presumably that's fine dust eroded from the pebbles, and it's preferentially sorted onto the sides of the "valleys" by wind (?)

I have to say I'm quite happy Teshiener won't have to make route maps by deciphering which nearly identical dune we're parked next to today... that whole slog down to Erebus and Beagle was purgatory to me

Belated congrats to all the nice people who made this landing a success.

In post #173 I also started to consider a comparison of polygons at the Phoenix site and Utopia Planatia (latitude 48N) for Viking 2.