Navcam Sol 300. What the heck..?

An airplane I have no idea. Perhaps a meteor? But this bright at day.

High-Altitude Reconnaissance

It's almost surely a cosmic ray hit. The longer the exposure the more likely you are to see them on the CCD. There has been plenty of them in the earlier images, especially during the few times the rovers have been imaging the night sky on Mars.

In the following image you see stars moving in the same direction leaving trails, noise on the CCD resulting in individual exposed pixels and dots and cosmic rays criss-crossing all over the field:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre...an_2-A067R1.jpg

Might be another orbiter image - we caught one of the viking orbiters earlier on - and this does have the sort of fade up that one might expect from that. Doesnt look like a classic radiation strike to me.


Doug

I think we can rule out an orbiter image. These daytime exposures are measured in milliseconds, during which any orbiter certainly wouldn't move nearly 2 degrees, as this streak has.

On top of that, it's far too bright. An iridium-style glint is conceivable, but exceedingly unlikely and still not bright enough in my experience.

Cosmic ray hit!