"Whitewater Lake" RAT in colors (from Pancam).

SOL 3090 - front and rear hazcam:

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment


The rear one is scaled down to "hide" the compression artifacts ...

Next to it are two interpretations from SOL 3090 images of the RAT hole. The left one is the false color combination with L3-L6-L7 each filter 100%, the right one is approx. 100%-66%-33% ...

SOL 3087 - MI stitch:

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Its not perfect yet ...

Here's my corresponding colour image:

Click to view attachment

The drill result looks pretty different in colour than the undisturbed surface.

Cheers, Udo

Agreed, looks to me like the red and cyan sides are reversed!

Airbag

And since the fines provide a pseudo streak test we can be pretty confident that there is no hematite in the mix.

An aside - the drift from greek roots continues. From haematite to hematite, aeolian to eolian, aeon to eon.

I confirm : the layer seems to be really grey, not blue, but as grey as the plaster of Paris...
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=191488

I'm reading it right now and would like to remark these paragraphs:

The plan ahead is for Opportunity to check out other sites around Matijevic Hill and "move back and forth and up and down along the outcrop to really understand the structure and the stratigraphy and how the layers combined, and the composition and the variation in composition," Arvidson said.

and

"We will undoubtedly come back to Kirkwood, undoubtedly, and move along the length of the outcrop, looking for variations in the density and the patterns of the spherules and trying to find a big aerial exposure of the brecciated part of it, and trying to find a big aerial exposure of these veins so we can get the turret in there to do MIs and APXS' of these different parts of Kirkwood," said Arvidson.

Yes. And look how incredibly fine and cohesive the cuttings are from this APXS press. The impressions of the phillips-head screws are preserved. And note the fractures meandering across the smooth area.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2976M2M1.JPG

--Bill

An excellent anaglyph, but I also suspect that the left & right images are reversed. The Phillips head screw slots are indented. I was beginning to wonder if we had discovered buried metal machine parts!

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=28433

The impression of the Phillips head screw slots looks correct in Bills non-anaglyph image. (link below)

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2976M2M1.JPG

Sorry guys - I'll make a better one next week when I'm back at work

Well they define it as sandstone (100u grain size). Those fines and the really fine clastic structure sure looks like mudstone and 100u is pretty much on the classification boundary. Maximum identified grain size? I wonder what the cementing is? Clay? It would be interesting to get Tim Demko's reassessment of this area now that we have more information available.

Ngunn - I really want to understand what you're saying, but this bit defeats me

Just noting that Cape York seems a continuation of the curve delineated by Cape Tribulation, Cape Byron etc. These are at the edge of the existing bowl and are raised well above the enroaching plains material. This effect would most likely reflect uplift rim.

The L0 Navcam view on Sol 3091.

Jan van Driel

Click to view attachment

Tiny bump downslope on 3092 - compare these two frames:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol3092
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol3092

Sol 3091 Navcam pan. That's a nice comfortable place

We have a wealth of info on this spot. I'd like to hear from Don and Tim on this, too.

Oppy has bumped slightly and is now IDDing the "Blue Resistant Areas" on the current outcrop.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ger/2012-10-07/
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ger/2012-10-08/

are the Exploratorium pages for the current MI interest.

And most fascinating is this one MI:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...29P2956M2M1.JPG

Whoa.

--Bill

It looks like a...sheet of ice??

Or even, at the other end of the spectrum, something glazed over by high temperature.. like Martian ceramic.

Whoa indeed!!! I'm dying to find out what this really is!

Not ice-- temperature and pressure are wrong. It's probably a vitreous or microcrystalline or crystalline material polished by ages of wind erosion and dusted off with the RAT brush. This puzzle-piece has many possibilities, we need to know more about it. Yummy.

--Bill

Wider angle view...

Click to view attachment

(best I can do, look forward to seeing someone do it properly! )

How about a "desert varnish?" The stuff's clay, after all. And it looks a heck of a lot like what we're looking at.

We don't know if this is the clay yet!

There is a circular feature with an irregular centre at about half past ten on the brushed area that almost looks like a sliced spherule.

Wowsers. Speaking for myself, dburt’s devitrification hypothesis with regard to the new berries just went to the top of the list. This is looking more and more like an impact generated pseudotachylite deposit. Vitreous, devitrification crystals, veining, quench features – it all seems to fit. The now seemingly shallow fine clay like deposits could well be the result of weathering of this glass – residual clay.

A degree of wild shooting from the hip there, but to generate such in this position would imply a product of the Miyamoto event. Massive impact generated thermal shock supplemented by material depositing close to the Miyamoto rim passing through the superheated cloud.

No water here then.

Still arm-waving and hopping back-and-forth here, but this is seeming more and more like the contact between the "kirkwood unit" and the "whitewater unit". The Whitewater unit is variably laminated and (fairly amorphous and massive, but )I have the impression that this surface is a bedding plane.

This is a wondrous place.

--Bill


(corrected description of 'whitewater')

Serpens, much appreciate the vote. I also couldn't help notice the radiating structure of the outer rind of the cross-sectioned new berry referenced by Bill Harris above. Also agree that the "punky" surrounding rock looks far more like clay-alteration of some type than any type of sedimentary rock (including clay-rich shale). Still thinking about the possible significance of the glassy-looking coating - is it an exposed fracture fill, or an outer weathering product, or something else?

I keep hopping between "exposed fracture fill, or an outer weathering product, or something else" myself. And the more I flip through the images we have thus far the more hopping around I do-- it could be "all the above". My initial thought was that the "blue resistant areas" are the remnants of a fracture fill, but the split new-berry threw that idea into a tizzy.

We'll have more images to review tomorrow...

--Bill

I'm more fascinated with what appears to be a flow pattern in the "varnish," resulting in mini-lobes that appear to flow from right to left across the image.

I've never seen desert varnish freezing in any kind of flow pattern before... at least, not unless it comes from transient moving water.

-the other Doug

True. But what makes you think that it is desert varnish?

Indeed. That's why I put "varnish" in quotation marks the first time I used the word. It's some kind of hardened layer, but the look of flow along its top really makes me think of something that splashed into a sheet then "froze" in place.

-the other Doug

Whitewater appears to be a finely laminated rock. The dark patches we see on the top of Whitewater seem to be remnants of one of those laminae. I was hoping to get a closer look at the darker material, and that is apparently what we are seeing in the MIs from sol 3094. The attached image highlights the approximate location of the MIs on a false color pancam composite from sol 3092.
Click to view attachment
Interestingly, the dark, vitreous-appearing lamination seems to be thinner than the diameter of the embedded spherule.

You're correct, CR, Whitewater is laminated and not "massive or amorphous"-- I've corrected my earlier description. I was too focused in on one area of the whole outcrop. The laminations appear to be quite variable and the unit is riddled with fractures.

The "Blue Resistant Area" (call it Blue Goo?) on this outcrop appears to be a remnant of a thicker zone-- it has been weathered, and eroded by the wind and is the contact between two rock types (yeah, I've hopped back to the "this is a contact" camp again). So this is a unique spot-- it could tell us what the surface of Whitewater was like at the time that the overlying unit (Kirkwood??) was deposited. Note this puzzle-piece: brushing at the previous IDD location showed that this outcrop has a thin, soft, ochre-colored surface underlain by a light-bluish material. It might be dust, but with the persistent prevailing winds of this area that is less likely and dust has not been seen on the adjacent Blue Crunchy Kirkwood fragments. It could be a weathering rind that occurs on the exposed Whitewater outcrop. Looking closely at this remnant Blue Goo material will tell a lot.

I needs to get off me duff and upload the many views of this outctop area to my photosite. Been putting it off-- give me a couple of days and I'll announce when there are enough up to warrant a visit.

CR-- your location of the current IDD spot is dead-on. Good find.

--Bill

Rock varnish tends to be high in Mn as well as clays, so the composition may help to discriminate among the possibilities.

New MIs in the pipeline:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ger/2012-10-10/

They've RAT-brushed another, adjacent spot at the second IDD site on the "resistant blue area" on Sol 3096.

And are drooling on a new target: Lindsley, P2575 and P2576, which appears to be bedding-plane outcrop with multiple layers:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...29P2575R4M1.JPG

Thumb-twiddling for the next ODY-pass...

--Bill

Did Oppy drive over some portion of the later MI image coverage area? There are two arcs of what appear to be scratches in the less-durable covering layer on the right side of the image linked below; one large arc and another much narrower arc tangent to the larger one:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...29P2956M2M1.JPG

These "scratch arcs" look decidedly artificial to me.

-the other Doug

Artificial for sure - those are from the rat brush!

Those marks are from either from the RAT brush or the RAT contact ring. I wondered, too.

--Bill

OK -- well, the arcs are far bigger than the outside arc of the RAT's circular footprint. I guess the RAT was turned on and dragged across the surface, eh? First time I've ever seen that.

Another first for Opportunity!

-the other Doug

The brush has a larger and more diffuse footprint than the RAT itself. Outlying bristles could easily cause that exact pattern

Keeping in mind that I have no idea what the RPs did on that Sol (I haven't been on Oppy for almost three months now) the scratches tangent to the RAT brushes could be from the RAT butterfly contact switches. We definitely do not move the IDD while RATing or brushing.

Paolo

Click to view attachment

X-eye stereo. Separate laminae, equally thin, in unbrushed area.

Click to view attachment

Thin layer in brushed area also, and "canyon" between brushed and unbrushed areas.

Sol 3098 Navcam pan. Just one missing frame to have the full 360°.

Very good! And there are a couple of spheriodules of unknownst affinity in those stereos.

And thissol, she's moved upslope and north-ish to tasty outcrops. New names listed in theTracking Web as "Site168" and "Chelmsford".

--Bill

Ant103: That's a beautiful and interesting panorama. Your work is always very good. Thanks for posting it.

I wish I could understand the nature of these mounds.

Hay everyone, there are fantastic pancams down today. image White gypsum layer?

Cool rocks ahead...

Click to view attachment

Could be almost anything; remember all the bizarre mineral layers Spirit exposed over at Home Plate. Hopefully they'll find it worth a ChemCam zap.

You're proposing Opportunity use ChemCam?
Like a sort of instrument loan?

Oy, I'm an idiot; forgot which rover we were on!!!

(We need a 'duhhh' emoticon!!!)

It would sure make analysis go faster :-)