I'd get comfortable, folks; I don't think we're going anywhere for a while yet. This one may be rather special.

At least when Opportunity does get going, she have a hill start!!
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...F5P1974R0M1.JPG

I don't know, Stu. I'm listening to little Ruiz, and all I can hear is "...Berries...what berries? I ain't got no steenkin' blueberries!!"
Is something being lost in translation?
You haven't by any chance been painting the 'roses' blue, have you?

No, no rose-painting Shaka. That violent orange hued pic was contrast boosted to bring out detail, I probably should have said, my apologies. The berries studding RG aren't slap-across-the-face obvious at first glance, but they are there. But they look more like bluish round flat areas than actual round objects. If you look at the ground around RG it's quite thick with them.

Click to view attachment

Out on the open ground the berries are thick as fleas, but not inside the rock - not inside the MI's - that is the point I have been trying to make for awhile.
Maybe I've got spots in my eyes covering the blueberries emerging from the matrix - can I possibly get a consensus of opinion before I rush off to my optician?

I'm thinking: big, ancient rock, eroding very, verrrrry slowly... it doesn't have to be as fat with berries as a freshly-baked martian muffin for a lot to accumulate around it. And don't forget the MI field of view is, what, just over 4.5cm across? And a single berry is a decent chunk of that? So we're not going to see an MI image showing berries packed together like ball bearings in a jam jar lid, are we?

That's my entirely unqualified take on it anyway.

Discuss.

As much as I'm eager to get driving again, I'm going to miss views like this:
Click to view attachment

There's lots of them in this rock. If you can't see them, you're just not looking. Stu's highlighted a bunch for you. Did you not see them before? Do you see them now? If not - I can't help you.

A good clear statement of position.

I DO see interesting "structures" in these rocks that would correspond to the location of concretions in the matrix that we have been admiring - off and on - since Eagle Crater. However these dark structures have a very irregular shape to my tired old eyes - one could speculate that they are the 'primordia' or 'seeds' of blueberries consisting of a clump of platy crystals that were going to develop into proper concretions had the process of concretion continued. But I'm not sure that this is the most likely or popular model of berry formation these days, and I am still surprised that there are so few, if any, small concretions in evidence that have a smooth, spherical shape. So what is different about the bedrock on this side of this crater? Obviously, there are scads of berries all over the ground, but from what matrix have they eroded? Other higher layers long eroded away? The free berries around here don't look 'fresh' to me. They look old and worn, like me. I'm eager to hear JPL's discussion of the analyses at the rat-holes. It may prove quite interesting.

My position.

Some really good points in there Shaka. Wish I was qualified to comment on some of them! I'll have to leave that to the more science-savvy people here. But lots of food for thought, thanks.

I've downloaded your annotated image, Stu; blown it up with Photoshop, and taken a hard look at the 19 objects on the rock you've circled. I have to say that these do not, in general, closely resemble the ready-to-fall concretions we've been seeing on so many other eroded bedrocks at Meridiani. As you pointed out above, they often have a 'flattened' appearance and are generally much smaller and irregular in shape and 'color' than the concretions you have circled alongside the rock. Of the 19 examples there is one that is closest in appearance to a 'blueberry' - in the upper 'row' of circles near the left center, just left of a nearly vertical fracture. I just can't see the others being taken for 'blueberries' if they were to fall down with the others. But the resolution of this picture is barely adequate to characterize such minute objects. Only the MI's give us plentiful resolution for the task. Yes, they are sadly limited in area of coverage, and so we might conclude that we don't have an adequate sample to answer the question clearly. I simply expressed an opinion that blueberries seemed few, if any, in the bedrock matrix on this side of the crater. I asked for others' opinions and hope that some of our professionals in the forum will weigh in, pending an authoritative report from the JPL investigators.

Aye, it's a puzzle, that's to be sure...

Seriously tho, some very thought-provoking ideas there Shaka. It'll be very interesting to see the MI pics of the interior of that deep "cleft" on the left side of RG. Looking forward to those.

I'm looking forward to the color MI mosaics appearing on my favorite blog

Maybe I can help with the blueberries. I wanted an objective view, so I enhanced the color of the blues and greens, but not of the reds through yellow. I got this interesting image, which agrees with most (but not all) of Stu's blueberries. Perhaps the ones where we don't agree are covered with red dust.
Click to view attachment

Steve M

They're careful to avoid saying too much at this point, but there are some good Opportunity tidbits in the Rovers Update for February at planetary.org, if you care to go looking for clues.

Here are a couple of those tidbits:
So this says that there actually isn't something unique about Santa Maria, at least as far as the CRISM signature goes.

And nothing too surprising about the upcoming plans:

Not unique, but that makes it more interesting.



Ada Crater. I'm trying to figure out where they saw hydrated sulfate at Victoria; I can't find anything about that.

Didn't want to revive an ancient thread but my wife as I've mentioned before, doesn't wholeheartedly share my interest in space science, and said (as I was looking at Stu's majestic panorama of Santa Maria in post 533 above)

"A billion miles to poke about in a dusty hole in the ground?"

I took that to mean they'd looked at Victoria after Oppy's visit and detected hydrated sulfates..?

Hmm, could be. Now that I read it again, it's not exactly clear on that point.

The view from Luis de Torres:



James

Nice observation Shaka, supported by the MI. Trigonal hematite crystals?

It's been clarified on the Update now

Gracias. It's worth mentioning once again what a great resource these Planetary.org MER Updates are.

James, the colour on that is so perfect it's like looking out of a lander window... outstanding!

Here is the Pancam L2 view of Santa Maria between Sol 2512 and 2517

Jan van Driel

Click to view attachment

We've bumped up a bit closer to RG:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2525

jamescanvin, your vista is quite breathtaking, happy martian gulps!...thanks - as always, for sharing

james canvin - wow ! thanks for that 20MB view of that crater!

"Mabuya"...

Click to view attachment

Nasty-looking scab you've got there, little one...

Crude mosaic of MI images of the surface of Ruiz's 'scab' over on its left... rather complicated, isn't it..?

Click to view attachment

I think this may be a sneak preview of Oppy's drive direction when she finally turns her back on Santa Maria, and heads for the faraway hills of Endeavour...

http://twitpic.com/46xuf0/full

(3D, red/blue image, far too big to post here, hence the link to my twitpic gallery)

It looks like rocky road ice cream that was left out on the counter too long.

Oh, great; now I wanna eat it!

Seriously, I will be extremely interested to see the first pro interpretations of this beast. It almost looks like some sort of transition sample as ambient conditions changed. Might even be 'metamorphic' in the sense that it's been modified since formation, possibly through an impact other than the one that formed Santa Maria? Might not even be from these particular parts.

Lots of questions. Guess that's why we're here.

To my untrained eye it looks like a crust of material that splashed and sprayed over the rock(s) and then hardened, but what do I know...

You can really see how the air's gotten dustier recently in that mosaic. Compare this new frame from 2529:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...5M1.JPG?sol2529
with this frame from 2484, back at the conjunction stop:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...AXP2374L5M1.JPG

Tribulation's hazier now, and the bits of Iazu in the far background are getting hard to see.

I wouldn't be shocked if we passed through there. But FWIW those three Pancam frames are labelled "Rodrigo de Escobar"; another Santa Maria crewman.

I noticed that too. I just thought that it looked like a likely direction, and it's a nice "downhill" view in 3D too...

Since color MI's are all the rage lately, I borrowed Stu's MI mosaic as well as his color composition of Ruiz, did a little perspective twisting and bending, and came up with this. As Stu would say, "just messing about..."

You really should do more work like that, that's a fantastic picture.

I agree; that is really good stuff.

What are the straight dark lines?

Contact probe shadow?

Continuing our occasional series of fantasy Endeavour views...

The Hills are calling Oppy...

Click to view attachment

Really amazing picture Dan!

Does that mean there is an ex-nun dancing and twirling around up there?

Great stuff, Dan & Stu!

Well, if Julie Andrews is up there singing, we mercifully would never hear it since I assume she wouldn't be taking off her helmet while doing so...

I think we'd be even less likely to hear it if she took off her helmet...

"the clays are alive with the CRISM sounder..."

"the hills are alive, with the sound of Marsic..."