Do any of you know what, if any, are the possible sources of tiny fibers which could have fallen onto the collection slide from the lander? For example, thermal blankets, insulation, or a woven wrapping around a cable ?

thanks!

Got a sample image?

There is a small fiber stuck which to me appears to be stuck by one end on the slide, the other end of which which appears to move in the wind by time lapse, perhaps also as focus was changed. (Perhaps the focal change makes it appear to move? I don't think this is the case.)

See the post by rlb2 who found this first in the middle of this page, for stills, and also read the discussion for the exact location: http://www.space.com/common/community/foru...elife.space.com

And here is a Flash animation of the apparent movement by a_lost_packet: http://www.zshare.net/flash/140388723809779c/

rlb2 has estimated the fiber's length to be 0.1 mm. In some posts, this apparently moving fiber has been termed a 'worm'. (and no, I don't think there is any chance that it is, though it is amusing!) I am just interested in what are the sources of fibers which could have fallen off the lander and onto the slide.

Given that this is from a clean slide that hadn't been exposed to the landing dustfall - anything seen is simply artifacts of a non-perfect collection slide. The illumination is entirely from within the OM ( http://www.mps.mpg.de/images/projekte/phoe...ca-om01_xxl.jpg ) and the LED's are in a ring around the OM optics, causing the change in shadows as the different LED's are turned on to image the slide. Notice how the 'worm' moves in exactly the same way as the shadow around all the other imperfections on the substrates?

Disappointing, but not all together surprising that people would try and make something out of it.

Thanks for the explanation and picture.

There are many things in a clean room which could leave tiny 0.1mm fibers in the microscope: the bunny suits, hair nets, booties, kimwipes, paper, etc. Any of those that contained optical brighteners (such as white paper or laundered fabric) would also fluoresce in UV.

Do you know when are they going to use the Atomic Force Microscope? why didn`t they use it so far?

Probably real soon now. From Mark Lemmon's raw images page:

Sol 042: Clean and scrape Wonderland, AFM checkout part 1

Do you know if the Atomic Force Microscope could detect and "photograph" any (possibly existing) micro-organisms in the soil samples? what size(nm) should the microbes have to be detected?

University of Arizona, Mars Phoenix MECA

See my update from today -- they hope to finish characterization of the Atomic Force Microscope tosol, so we should shortly begin to see it being used on samples already tagged in the OM.

--Emily

Can we identify the Vestry location in an image?

Phil

The first AFM image of a test material was obtained.
So at least we know the AFM works as planned.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/images.php?fileID=14644

For those who haven't seen it yet, there's a new installment in Tom Pike's BBC blog:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7408033.stm

Interesting bit about the AFM:
"The particles, though, are much more difficult to image. They tend to be pushed about by the sharp tip of the AFM, frustrating our attempts. On Earth, we'd be able to turn a few knobs to minimise the forces between the tip and the particle.

For Phoenix, each "tweak" of the computer code takes hours to prepare and the results from Mars aren't known until the next sol. We also have to book ahead to be able to run our microscopes on Phoenix.

What takes just a few minutes to run on the testbed in our laboratory in Tucson takes several sols to complete on Mars. A good deal of patience is a requirement for any member of the science team. "

Roadblocks on all fronts, it seems.

In the BBC blog, I wonder what the point is of making soil/ice mixtures in one's kitchen--not exactly Mars conditions.

I wonder if they anticipted this problem. In laymans terms, its not working.

I'd guess that they are taking the soil/ice mixtures and then putting them under partial vacuum (or what passes for atmospheric pressure on Mars) and watching stuff sublime.

[BTW, we do this all the time with water-soluble compounds. Dissolve in water, freeze, then put under a high vacuum to sublime out the water. The dissolved stuff slowly precipitates out in the frozen matrix and becomes hyperfluffy. The lyophilization process makes it real easy to manipulate miniscule amounts of material (sub-milligram quanities) with a laboratory spatula.]

-Mike

They did. The substrate etching/holes were specifically designed to bound trapped particle size and minimise the movement of those particles. Given time they will probably be able to adjust the focus to reflect the sample, but the tip is delicate and vulnerable to the effects of rough particles. Overall the inclusion of the AFM seems somewhat of a gamble and possibly this is why there is an AFM shaped hole in the Mission Success Criteria.

Have to ask why it's even considered part of the mission success criteria, then. Nobody's ever flown an AFM before, AFAIK; if so, this is a pathfinder effort. Deploying the thing and getting a read on the control target is a success, as far as I'm concerned. Learning about the effects of environmental variables is one reason it's there in the first place.

According to Mark in the mission success thread use of the AFM is not a mission success criteria. The OM alone is enough to satisfy "It shall also analyze 3 additional samples in its microscopy station."

Poor use of language. By 'an AFM shaped hole in the Mission Success Criteria' I meant that the AFM was not included in the criteria. I agree with Mark.

I could hardly believe it when I first learned that Phoenix carried an AFM experiment. I don't know a lot about these devices, but sending one to Mars certainly seems like a bold move to me.

I couldn't help but wonder though, about the "computer code tweaking/uplinking/downlinking" strategy. Might it not be easier to simply move the tip to another potentially trapped particle, and try to probe it with the default parameters? I suspect my ignorance of interplanetary AFM operations prevents me from seeing the errors in my suggestion, but I couldn't help but speak my mind.

Anyone wants to identify these tiny grains from the OM?
This looks like a nice catch.

Click to view attachment

J-j-jumping Juniper! A golden egg! T-twenty-four karat dilithium crystals! We're rich!

The colours are really hard to pull out - looks cool though. This is a mosaic of three obs that cover the whole substrate.

I got this... probably 1000% wrong but I just fell in love with the colours!

Click to view attachment

They look like tiny beads of amber... ( I know they're NOT, before anyone says anything! )

Is there no official description of this OM? Was this a sample that should have included ice? Maybe ice granules become more spherical as they sublimate.
Where are these OMs being made public? How many have been made? I wanna SEE this stuff!

Hmm...wind-eroded (rolled around), or is there an erosional effect on the material from the seasonal frost? If this was from Earth I'd say they were silica, but not here. Olivene?

Right on! What was the LED combination used. What was the substrate. We want to know what the real colour was. Enough already guys, stop teasing!

Sol 58 Raw Images

For instance the green-illumination image of the wee balls is, 13:48:10 local Mars time, substrate selection 13411, etc.:

Thanks, 0110...011...1... Do you mind if I call you '0'?
As the current "newby-in-the-know", are you the one to quiz about OM images?
Has anyone explained how all these...emeralds...er...rubies...amethysts...popsicles?
managed to get all clustered in the lower left corner of the field?
(I assume my biologist's explanation of gregarious behavior in Volvox colonies is inadmissible.)
TIA,
Shaka

They are very pretty grains. The illumination was RGB for some of the false color images we've seen here. The substrate was the "strong magnet", per the table.

Raw JPG's and Real Colour are essentially mutually exclusive.

Thanks for the link CR, very useful and interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing what the real imaging experts here do with the microscope images coming down. I didn't think I'd find them so interesting, if I'm honest... I'm definitely a "rocks" fan rather than a "grains" fan, but there's something fascinating about seeing Mars in such close-up...

While I'm here, can I just invite everyone over to my new Phoenix pictures site? I thought it made sense to tidy up all my clutter and put it in one place. It's going to be a gallery of unashamedly pretty pictures, with no claims of accuracy or scientific worth; just my own cosy little den where I can hang my favourite pics and share them with anyone who wants a look, too... Hope some of you will drop by - and if you'd like a link to your own pictures site putting on it, just drop me a line, ok?

Here is the caption for one of the jpg:

Click to view attachment

This should help

So, high in iron--meteoric?

Thanks for the pointers. All of a sudden it is all so clear. I will read the website properly next time.

That is an extremely useful link, CR. Where did you find it -- where is it linked from? I'm wondering if this is a file that they update or if it's a one-time report. Since it only goes out to sol 30 it seems it may be a one-time report...

--Emily

Link to table is here: MECA Microscopy Sample Stage Configuration Sols 0-30

Well, not necessarily. Grains of meteoritic iron are not the only things that could be held by a magnet. There are a number of minerals that are weakly or strongly magnetic (eg, magnetite, ilmentite, pyrrhotite, etc.). Furthermore, minute inclusions of magnetic minerals within grains of otherwise nonmagnetic minerals can make them magnetic.

I found the link to that table on the same page 01101001 posted in the prior comment. There is also a picture of the sample wheel layout there. The table is apparently an example only, and will probably not be updated. However, I suspect if you ask the right person you could get a copy of the current table.

You probably know this, but I neglected to mention that one needs to determine the sample "rotation" to figure out which substrate was imaged. Since this is not currently metadata that is being captured by MMB in the .csv file it writes for the Pheonix images, you'll need to open the jpeg image in a text editor to read it, as teck demonstrates above.

CR.
The rotation numbers, lighting etc are recorded in the image description that can be read by clicking the thumbnail and then hovering the cursor over the larger image. But the table is the key to correlating this to the OM designation and hence the substrate. Given this I would have expected the OM designation and the rotation position to be fixed. They are not and some OM images from SOL 58 nominate rotation positions that do not appear in the table against an OM number. So I retract my previous statement. It isn't clear after all.

The table still applys. The rotation number is given as nominal position. If you take set number 8, all rotation numbers fall in the range given. When the position is not in the table, it is generaly an offset from a nominal position. You can see this in the image where the edge of the frame is seen.

The image shown previously is possibly misleading concerning the origin of the grains. I could not find the calibration image before the sample was taken. There is a dark frame taken at this position but it is taken after the sample image

Thanks for reminding me about the mouse-over info, Aussie. I had forgotten the info was available there, since I typically mass-download the images using MMB, and I only occasionally use that raw images page.

teck: What do you mean by, "The image shown previously is possibly misleading concerning the origin of the grains." ...?

You may be surprised to hear this, Doug, but I've been working on a method to use raw JPGs to generate Real Color images of those elusive dust devils that have been cleaning off the MER solar panels. I'm not there yet, but I am getting close.

_{Sorry, the devil made me do it.}

Because this is a strong magnet, the grains could have been there a long time ago. As I mentioned, unless there is an image showing the same target before a sample was taken, we cannot say where the grains came from. I did not find it.

Oooh... I've been trying the same thing, CR, and I've been using both good-quality wands and multi-person spell casting, so far with no luck. Tell me, have you decided whether or not to use live sacrifices? I've not yet committed to that level of effort, alas.



-the other Doug

From what I can tell, the photo of the clump is the "before" photo (that is, before a sample was deposited there). In the past they have done an empty image before a "full" image, and I couldn't find any earlier images of that particlular section of the sample wheel. The particles clumped around the magnet probably fell off of the other substrates as the wheel was rotated.

Covault's article:

Aviation Week: White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life

(I didn't notice this MECA topic was more about imaging. This news is about MECA WCL, wet chemistry laboratory. I added an article to topic Sol 65 and after, since Covault was already being discussed there. Further discussion of this Aviation Week story is best conducted there.)

Tom Pike describes the trials and tribulations of the AFM, but it looks like that they've got an excellent image of the calibration grid. A new update from the 1st of August:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7408033.stm

wonderful blog by Pike, please keep linking from it when there are news!