This "polished hard flat thing" reminds me of something that I once saw somewhere else:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFj9hgS2Ez8

A successful drive I think

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...NAP2446L5M1.JPG

It doesn't look like they're as close to Marquette as they were aiming for:

Well, it looks like they missed the goal by just a few meters in a 70m drive.
Given the sandy terrain at the beginning of the drive I would call it very successful.

Close enough to do so some imaging of the area before picking targets to study up close. There do appear to be lots of interesting bits lying around here - Marquette (shark) isn't the only one:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...KDP2578L7M1.JPG

WOW

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...H1P1978L0M1.JPG

I guess thats where the slip and aborted drive occurred.

Marquette area in stereo:
Click to view attachment

Might just be me - but it looks like they stopped mid-drive for imaging, then carried on?

That's what I was hoping.

EDIT - and fredk posted the image in post 555.

Keeping up the McCartney theme I'd like to suggest a title for that image: 'Ebony and Ivory'.

Oooh...!!

Click to view attachment

Caramba! That is an amazing shot! Look at the height of those dunes behind the monolith...
Is it my impression or Marquette looks quite different from the other islands? Younger stuff?

EDITED:

In this version by hortonheardawho, it looks layered to me and so possibly not a meteorite at all. Too early to tell?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hortonheardawho/4078399195/

Hmmm... my meteorite antennae aren't twitching much... this looks more like a great chunk of ejecta from a crater than it does a meteorite...

Click to view attachment

Guess we'll have to wait and see!

It looks top-heavy. Why doesn't it fall over? Buried base?

This will sound weird, but a large rock in these parts that isn't a meteorite might be kind of an interesting break from the routine!

The immediately surrounding terrain is different, too, more "traditionally Martian"-looking then Meridiani's norm. Interesting.

New Update:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...ll.html#sol2050

"The right-front wheel is now showing a return of elevated motor currents. The plan ahead is to rest the actuator during an extended stop for an in-situ (contact) science campaign."


Luckily we have a big rock in front of us.

I wonder if the slip and aborted drive had anything to do with return of elevated wheel current?

Hopefully, the "sublime" terrain up ahead is indeed that for driving.

From hortonheardawho's color image two posts above it looks like it isn't as..."monolithic"...as it may appear on a first observation, it is my impression that Marquette is...ah my english fails me here...shredded(?) vertically but not until the bottom of it, that could provide it the required stability to not fall over...

EDITED:
Technical question here...I was messing around with this image in good old CorelDraw:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...NAP2446L5M1.JPG

As some of you might know with Corel you can adjust the gama of an image, what happened was that some green pixels appeared in a single location in the whole photo. Can any of you wizards tell me why? Thanks!
Click to view attachment

Looking at the closeups of Marquette, it's centre of mass appears to be safely above the area of rock-ground contact, so it shouldn't fall over. Also, we've only seen it from one direction. It could be that the base is elongated in the line-of-sight direction, which would make it even more stable.

To me Marquette doesn't look like the Fe-Ni meteorites we've been visiting. But presumably it could be another kind of meteorite (or ejecta as others have said). We have seen one non Fe-Ni meteorite - can anyone recall where/when that was?

If you look at Horton's false-colour view of the area:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hortonheardawho/4079004188/
you can see several smaller pieces around Marquette that have a similar purply-bluish false-colour hue, which also don't look like Fe-Ni meteorites - perhaps they're fragments of a bigger Marquette?

I'll let the image gurus like Ted answer that, but let's be REALLLLLLLL careful with this discussion

The green pixels are in the original image you refered to. Nothing odd about that, though - you can see pixels of various colours in many of the supposedly monochrome jpl jpegs when you crank the gamma up. The reason is that they are not saved as genuine monochrome (8bit) images. The jpeg compression algorithm doesn't get the hues exactly right, which means you get hues other than grey, ie various colours.

It's always annoyed me a bit, since the filesize would be a bit smaller if they were saved as 8bit monochrome instead of 24bit colour. Also, as we see here, when you do severe tweaking of images you usually start to see these coloured artifacts, usually in the dark shadowed areas.

Were we not expecting any activity today, it seems only images from yesterday came down?

EGD And just why do we need to "...be REALLLLLLLL careful with this discussion"? Didn't seem to me to be verging on little green men or anything antiscientific. Fredk gave a great explanition.

He wasn't saying you were being like that - but that it is very easy for such a discussion to go that way.

This was posted on Twitter earlier

I have the impression we are just starting "restricted sols". Can someone confirm / disregard it?
And about further activity, Scott Maxwell twitted: "On Opportunity today: driving ~10m toward "Marquette Island" rock, setting up for fine approach (for IDD work) Monday.".

Thanks for the enlightning explanation fredk!

I can understand Floyd, with all the work you have done to keep this room as aseptic as possible I don't see no need for Dan to issue such a warning since the question required specifically a technical help which fredk provided pronto and clearly. We're not kids anymore you know?...
Dan...you are spending to much time with that mower of yours...

So...are we going to seat here for the whole weekend?...

My first impression of Marquette Island is that it is fairly brittle ejecta block from some other cratering event.
The final shape is reminiscent of a shock cone. The surrounding stones and cobbles were probably shed on final impact.
There appears to be multiple impact sites in the immediate neighborhood. This may mean possible multiple other ejecta that followed the same trajectory or this rock really bounced around and broke up. If so, it may be from deep underground and bears study... OR ... its just another weird kind of meteorite! This week's studies will tell...

Click to view attachment

Your mileage may vary...
Cheers

And indeed, a meteorite IS ejecta, albeit from another body in the solar system . . .

Ladies and gentlemen... Marquette Island...

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Can't wait to get closer to this beauty...

Click to view attachment

Reminds me a little of a dark version of "Wopmay", the 'dinosaur brain' rock Oppy saw back in Endurance...

What happened with yesterdays drive?

Yesterday was not a driving sol. If the question comes because of Scott Maxwell's twitter message, just say that I read it as: "On Opportunity today: sequencing a drive ~10m toward "Marquette Island" rock, setting up for fine approach (for IDD work) Monday.". Friday's work may be transmitted in a few hours during this morning (Saturday) uplink session.

We may see Opportunity driving today. My 2c.

I didn't expect a drive yesterday - I assumed the planned one was for today (Sat) or tomorrow (Sun) before IDD on Monday.

Slightly tweaked 3D view of Marquette Island...

http://twitpic.com/olrya/full

I have a lot of catching up to do after a whole month without broadband after moving home.

I was waiting for the rest of the filters of the Nereus Crater pan when I moved so that is easy to do:



BTW: Is it just me or is the PDT down?

It's not just you.

All the Cornell Astro domain seems down.

This site is one of those brilliant ideas that's blindingly obvious in retrospect...
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.astro.cornell.edu

Does a meteorite have to be from another body? What about ejecta that go into solar orbit for a while before returning to impact their planet of origin?

(Just a semantic query.)

Hmmm... looking at Marquette and its surrounding rubble, I'm reminded of this scene from the edge of Victoria...

Click to view attachment

I think this stop will prove very interesting...

Hello Marquette, whoever you are:
Click to view attachment

Is it possible to look up whether HiRISE or MOC imaged this region before? Can Fresh Crater be dated?

Not a meteorite, I reckon, but still a pretty amazing sight...

Click to view attachment

Full resolution version here

You'll have to talk to her father first.

They have plenty of targets for the IDD to choose from here

I wonder if Opportunity could topple this rock. It would be interesting to look underneath.

Just an ejecta, like those cobbles we've seen at Victoria. No more interest for me.

Pictures. With a color of the Sol 2057 :

Anaglyph :


And the panoramic for Sol 2058 :

Yeah, you're right. A huge great chunk of rock, that's clearly fallen out of the sky, scattering debris all around it... a slab of stone that looks like nothing else for literally miles around, sitting in the middle of the desert like a piece of martian modern art... a fat plate of dark ejecta that came from - where? When?

Naah, nothing of interest at all...

Click to view attachment

Really nice colour anaglyph Ant, by the way

..Same for me. BUT your panorama with this big chunk of rock set in the middle of nowhere is just great !

I'm not sure about precise numbers, but I'd guess that "fresh crater" is a lot older than our presence in orbit. It's "fresh" in geological terms.

Thanks all for the stunning pans/anaglyphs of Marquette!